Healthy People 2010 - With Annotations

Chapter 20

Injury and Violence Prevention
Lead Agency: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Note: Unless otherwise noted, data are from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, Healthy People 2000 Review, 1998-99.

20-5. Reduce deaths from work-related homicides.

Target: 0.4 deaths per 100,000 workers.

Baseline: 0.5 deaths per 100,000 workers aged 16 years and older were from work-related homicides in 1998.

Target setting method: 20 percent improvement. (Better than the best will be used when data are available.)

Data source: Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), DOL, BLS.

Data for population groups are not collected routinely.

An average of 20 workers die each week as a result of workplace homicides in the United States. The jobs where employees are at risk of being murdered in the workplace share a number of common factors, including interacting with the public, handling exchanges of money, working alone or in small numbers, and working late night or early morning hours. Workplace factors can be modified to reduce or eliminate the effects of these risk factors. Workers, employers, and others can launch workplace violence prevention efforts as a part of all comprehensive workplace safety and health initiatives.

Reducing the number of workplace homicides will require improved surveillance and analytic epidemiologic research as well as effectiveness research to assess engineering and other control strategies in various high-risk work settings. Additional education and outreach efforts also are necessary to inform workers, employers, occupational safety and health professionals, and others of the nature and magnitude of this problem and steps that can be taken to reduce the risk of workplace homicide.

Read Overview of Occupational Safety

Read Overview of Injuries

Back to HP 2010 Injury Objectives Page

Last modified: 15-Mar-2000.