Completed - New Jersey Safety and Health Outcomes (NJ-SHO) Data Warehouse

The New Jersey Safety and Health Outcomes (NJ-SHO) Center for Integrated Data was a CIRP partner program led by Allison E. Curry, PhD, MPH. Its mission was to promote a safe and healthy New Jersey through innovative data linkage and data sharing to support community-based solutions that reduce injury and death. This mission was fulfilled through the NJ-SHO Data Warehouse and NJ-SHO Data Dashboards, advancing not only the science of traffic safety but also the science of data linkage through innovative partnerships with state agencies.

NJ-SHO Data Warehouse

The NJ-SHO Data Warehouse is a linked database of administrative datasets from NJ on traffic safety and health outcomes containing more than 124 million records on 24 million individuals over a 17-year period (2004-2020). Data sources include six statewide administrative databases and individual- and community-level equity indicators, enabling rigorous investigation of injury and non-injury outcomes. By linking records for the same individuals across datasets, their experiences can be seen within the larger context of their lives. The Data Warehouse was created using rigorous data integration methods, detailed in an Injury Prevention paper. Through a collaborative grant with Brown University, crash, licensing, and citation data were also linked with Medicare data, creating the NJ-SHO-Medicare Linkage.

The NJ-SHO Data Warehouse is governed by legal agreements between Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and data owners that establish approved uses of the data and stringent security measures. 

NJ-SHO Data Dashboard

In 2022, the NJ-SHO Center for Integrated Data was awarded a grant from the New Jersey Division of Highway Traffic Safety to develop an interactive, public-facing website and people-focused data dashboard powered by the NJ-SHO Data Warehouse. The two main goals of the Dashboard were: 1) to encourage data use and data sharing among stakeholders to support safe transport for all and 2) to share information with communities interested in learning how to use data integration and visualization to improve safety. The NJ-SHO Data Dashboard displayed aggregated data on crash-involved drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists living in New Jersey’s 21 counties, offering the ability to compare transportation safety and injury metrics over time, by community, and by population characteristics.

Impact of the NJ-SHO Center for Integrated Data

This unique data source contains information spanning the pre-injury period to the post-injury period, supporting critical, high-priority research questions on injury prevention. Integrated data from multiple sources improves the quality and completeness of important data elements that help describe the transportation safety experience among different populations. Over 40 scientific papers have been published using the NJ-SHO Data Warehouse, covering topics including the effects of Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) laws in NJ, transportation equity, driver licensing rates among teen and older drivers, and crash circumstances of drivers with medical conditions, older drivers, pedestrians, and other vulnerable populations. 

Key findings from the NJ-SHO Center for Integrated Data:

• Integrating hospital and crash records provides a more complete picture of crash-related injuries than a single source.

• New Jersey’s 2010 graduated driver licensing decal law prevented intermediate young driver crashes.

• Driver’s license suspension policies can be a barrier to health care.

• The youngest and oldest drivers drive older vehicles with fewer safety features.

• Autistic drivers have lower crash rates, moving violations, and suspensions than non-autistic adolescents.

• Most older driver crashes occur within a few miles from home, regardless of medical condition.

• Many older Medicare beneficiaries involved crashes are exposed to multiple potentially driver impairing medications before and after the crash.

   

These studies have uniquely advanced our foundational understanding of drivers and their crashes, directly impacted driver safety policy, and proposed novel traffic safety methodologies. The NJ-SHO Center for Integrated Data reimagined how data are collected, integrated, analyzed, and shared to support safe transport in New Jersey and beyond.

For more information on the NJ-SHO Center for Integrated Data, please contact Dr. Allison Curry.