Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (incl. WISQARS, NCHS, MMWR)

What it is

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the federal public health agency whose injury surveillance systems provide the population-level denominators behind most child-safety statistics in the United States.

What it covers

Three CDC systems matter for home safety: WISQARS (Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System) for fatal and nonfatal injury counts and rates by age and mechanism; NCHS for underlying vital statistics; and MMWR for peer-reviewed public health analyses. Coverage spans drowning, poisoning, falls, suffocation, and transport injury — the mechanism classes the Hazard Map organizes around.

How to verify

Query WISQARS directly for any injury count or rate cited on a SafeMama page. Each query returns the data years and the case definition used, both of which belong in the citation.

How SafeMama uses it

CDC supplies rate and count framing where CPSC supplies product-specific incident data. Cite the specific system and year. Where SafeMama derives a figure (a ratio, a per-day restatement), the derivation is stated as SafeMama's, not CDC's.

Limitations / conflicts

WISQARS nonfatal estimates carry sampling error and are not appropriate for small-cell claims. Injury coding describes mechanism, not product, so CDC data alone cannot attribute an injury to a specific product category — pair with CPSC for that. No conflicts of interest: public-domain federal data.