An Evaluation of the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries as a System for Surveillance

The Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), a surveillance system administered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), was established nationally in 1992. It is designed to collect information on all fatal occupational injuries in the United States. An evaluation of the system was conducted in 1994 using guidelines developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Although the CFOI program meets its stated objective of providing comprehensive, timely, and verifiable fatality information, improvements could be made in the dissemination and use of CFOI data and reports. Specifically, the CFOI could be improved by using the data in analytic epidemiology studies and publishing them in peer-reviewed journals. Background