BILL NUMBER: AB 2425 AMENDED
BILL TEXT
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY MAY 31, 2016
AMENDED IN ASSEMBLY APRIL 5, 2016
INTRODUCED BY Assembly Member Brown
FEBRUARY 19, 2016
An act to add Article 7 (commencing with Section 116090.5) to
Chapter 5 of Part 10 of Division 104 of the Health and Safety Code,
relating to public health.
LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST
AB 2425, as amended, Brown. Public health: incident site
reports. health: unintentional injuries.
Existing law establishes the State Department of Public Health in
state government. Existing law vests within the department certain
duties and powers to protect and preserve the public health.
This bill would require the State Department of Public Health to
collaborate with representatives of various groups and
adopt, develop, on or before June 1, 2018,
a state data collection plan and uniform standards and
protocols that establish a uniform incident site report
requirement for purposes of collecting statewide
information on unintentional injury incidents. The bill
would require those standards and protocols to be implemented on a
statewide basis by every county, as prescribed. The bill would
require the department to periodically reconvene the representatives,
when necessary, to modify the standards and protocols.
incidents, as specified. The bill would specify that its
provisions not be construed to require data collection beyond that
required by existing law.
By imposing additional duties on local entities, this bill would
impose a state-mandated local program.
The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local
agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the
state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that
reimbursement.
This bill would provide that, if the Commission on State Mandates
determines that the bill contains costs mandated by the state,
reimbursement for those costs shall be made pursuant to these
statutory provisions.
Vote: majority. Appropriation: no. Fiscal committee: yes.
State-mandated local program: yes no .
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA DO ENACT AS FOLLOWS:
SECTION 1. (a) The Legislature finds and declares all of the
following:
(1) Data provided by the State Department of Public Health and the
federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows
unintentional injuries are the leading cause of hospitalization and
death for California's children and youth from one to 19, inclusive,
years of age and the leading cause of injury-related death for babies
and infants under one year of age.
(2) Unintentional injury has persistently been the leading cause
of death and hospitalization for California's children and youth for
more than two decades. The State Department of Public Health and the
federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that from
2003 to 2013, inclusive, unintentional injuries caused the death of
nearly 10,000 California children and youth, hospitalized another
240,000, and sent more than 4 million others to the emergency room.
(3) The State Department of Public Health and the national
Children's Safety Network report that in 2012, childhood
unintentional injury cost California's health care system over six
hundred seventeen million dollars ($617,000,000) in medical costs and
more than three billion four hundred million dollars
($3,400,000,000) in medical and wage loss costs combined because of
parent and guardian time off work caring for an injured child or
dealing with the death of a child due to unintentional injury.
(4) The vast majority of unintentional injuries are predictable
and preventable.
(5) The year 2016 is the start of a statewide campaign to make
unintentional injury incidents a rare, and not a common, occurrence
across the state in order to better protect the health and well-being
of all California children and youth.
(b) (1) It is the intent of the Legislature that the State
Department of Public Health take the lead role in collaborating with
representatives from other health and safety state and local
agencies, first responders, law enforcement, public health experts,
and childhood injury prevention experts to do all of the following:
(A) Establish statewide best practice guidelines, standards, and
incident site information collection tools to help collect data and
information at the site of an unintentional injury involving a child
or youth between zero and 19, inclusive, years of age.
(B) Aggregate statewide incident site data to better understand
the underlying cause of, and details about, unintentional injury
incidents.
(2)
(A) Identify the top 10 leading causes of unintentional
life-threatening injury, whether serious or critical, involving
California children and youth between zero and 19 years of age,
inclusive.
(B) Identify the most important sources of data for those causes
of unintentional injury identified in subparagraph (A), and develop a
plan for tracking that data in the measurement of prevention
policies, programs, and strategies to decrease the number and
severity of unintentional injury incidents in California, involving
children and youth between zero and 19 years of age, inclusive.
(C) Identify whether the data sources identified in subparagraph
(B) are already collected in an existing data system, and, if so,
whether that system is a sufficiently efficient means of that
collection. If the information identified in subparagraph (B) is not
already collected, recommend how best to gather the missing
information. If a jurisdiction or entity has developed a method of
collecting the information identified in subparagraph (B) that is
sufficiently efficient and informative, determine how best to apply
and communicate it throughout California in a prudent manner.
(D) Use the information gathered in subparagraphs (A), (B), and
(C) to create a state plan for increasing, in a nonduplicative and
cost-efficient manner, an unintentional injury incident reporting
information system to accomplish the substantial decrease in the
number and severity of unintentional injury of California's children
and youth between zero and 19 years of age, inclusive.
(E) Include in the state plan recommendations on how to aggregate
and correlate data regionally and statewide to inform our
understanding of underlying causes of serious unintentional child
injury.
(2) It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting this act to
create a state plan focused on unintentional injury incident site
reporting. The purpose of this act is to provide guidance in the
development of a statewide plan. It is also the intent of the
Legislature in enacting this act to utilize current data collection
systems where available and to not disrupt current data collection or
service provision relevant to trauma and first responder emergency
medical services. The purpose of this act is to develop improved
ongoing information to facilitate prevention of unintentional injury
causing the serious injury or death of California's children and
youth between zero and 19 years of age, inclusive.
(3) The goal is to provide more incident detail
information to help determine the best preventative strategies for
eliminating childhood unintentional injuries with an initial focus on
vehicle, bicycle, and pedestrian crashes, drowning, burns,
poisoning, suffocation, falls, nontraffic vehicle incidents, and
sports-related traumatic brain injuries.
SEC. 2. Article 7 (commencing with Section 116090.5) is added to
Chapter 5 of Part 10 of Division 104 of the Health and Safety Code,
to read:
Article 7. Incident Site Reports Standards and Protocols
116090.5. (a) (1) On or before June 1, 2018, the State Department
of Public Health shall, by regulation, adopt standards and protocols
to establish a uniform incident site report requirement for purposes
of collecting statewide information on unintentional injury
incidents.
(2) The standards and protocols shall be developed in
collaboration with representatives from other health and safety state
and local agencies, first responders, fire agencies, law enforcement
agencies, public health experts, and childhood injury prevention
experts in order for the department to understand the details at
incident sites for various types of unintentional injury.
(3) The department shall periodically reconvene these
representatives, when necessary, to modify the standards and
protocols.
(b) The standards and protocols adopted by the department shall be
implemented on a statewide basis by every county in the State of
California for use by the appropriate local reporting entities
identified in the standards and protocols.
(c) The standards and protocols shall, at a minimum, include the
following:
(1) A requirement that a reporting entity utilize an incident site
reporting best practices form and incident site investigation
protocol, specific to each type of unintentional injury, to report
information to existing local, regional, and statewide data systems
and to the local health department.
(2) A requirement that the county health department be responsible
for submitting the data received pursuant to paragraph (1) to the
state's EpiCenter data system, no later than 60 days after receipt of
the incident site report.
(d) For purposes of this section, the following definitions shall
have the following meanings:
(1) "Department" means the State Department of Public Health.
(2) "Reporting entity" means the reporting entity identified in
the standards and protocols developed by the State Department of
Public Health.
(3) "Incident site reports" or "incident" relates to, among
others, site reports or incidents that involve unintentional injuries
from drownings, near drownings, burns, window falls, bicycle
crashes, pedestrian crashes, sleep suffocation, kids left in cars,
vehicle backovers, vehicle frontovers, sports-related activities, and
poisoning.
116090.5. (a) On or before June 1, 2018, the State Department of
Public Health shall develop the following:
(1) A state data collection plan focused on the 10 leading causes
of death and hospitalizations due to injuries involving children and
youth between zero and 19 years of age, inclusive.
(A) The plan shall identify the incident site attributes,
including environmental factors, situational variables, and special
inherent risks that would better inform California's unintentional
injury prevention policies, programs, and strategies.
(B) The plan shall include recommendations for data collection and
evaluation, including additions to the existing data sources, and
continued prudent maintenance of data currently collected.
(C) The department shall periodically reconvene practitioners and
experts to update the plan and make modifications to address evolving
dangers, as needed.
(2) Uniform standards and protocols for incident site reports for
purposes of collecting data on unintentional injury incidents
involving children and youth between zero and 19 years of age,
inclusive, that result in death or hospitalization.
(A) The uniform standards and protocols shall identify appropriate
reporting entities.
(B) The uniform standards and protocols shall, at a minimum,
include the following:
(i) Incident site reporting best practices form and incident site
investigation protocol, specific to each type of unintentional
injury, to report information to existing local, regional, and
statewide data systems, if that reporting is practical and does not
distract the existing emergency medical services or health care data
collection system from its current function and mission, and to the
local health department.
(ii) Recommendations on how best to capture local unintentional
injury incident site report data and information, so the data is
accessible by, and can be incorporated into, existing state data
systems associated with trauma and unintentional injury prevention
programs, and recommendations regarding the timeline for
consolidation of the data into existing related data systems.
(b) The statewide plan and uniform standards and protocols shall
be developed in collaboration with representatives from other health
and safety state and local agencies, first responders, fire agencies,
law enforcement agencies, public health experts, and childhood
injury prevention experts in order for the department to understand
the details at incident sites for various types of unintentional
injury involving children and youth between zero and 19, years of
age, inclusive.
(c) This section shall not be construed to mandate reporting
entities identified in the uniform standards and protocols to collect
or report data beyond that required by existing law.
(d) For purposes of this section, the following definitions shall
have the following meanings:
(1) "Department" means the State Department of Public Health.
(2) "Incident site reports" or "incident" relates to, among
others, site reports or incidents that involve unintentional injuries
from drownings, near drownings, burns, window falls, bicycle
crashes, pedestrian crashes, sleep suffocation, children left in
cars, vehicle backovers, vehicle frontovers, sports-related
activities, and poisoning.
(3) "Reporting entity" means the reporting entity identified in
the standards and protocols developed by the department.
SEC. 3. If the Commission on State Mandates
determines that this act contains costs mandated by the state,
reimbursement to local agencies and school districts for those costs
shall be made pursuant to Part 7 (commencing with Section 17500) of
Division 4 of Title 2 of the Government Code.