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Introduction: More military personnel die of injuries each year than any other cause. This paper provides a basic epidemiologic description of injury deaths in the military., Methods: Using fatality data from the Department of Defense Directorate of Information and Operations Reports and population data from the Defense Manpower Data Center, death rates of men and women in the military services for unintentional injury, suicide, homicide, and illness were calculated for the 1980-1992 period., Results: From 1980 to 1992, injuries (unintentional injuries, suicides, and homicides combined) accounted for 81% of all nonhostile deaths among active duty personnel in the Armed Services. The overall death rate due to unintentional injuries was 62.3 per 100,000 person-years. The suicide rate was 12.5, the homicide rate 5.0, and the death rate due to illness 18.4. From 1980 to 1992 mortality from unintentional injuries declined about 4% per year. The rates for suicide and homicide were stable. Men in the services die from unintentional injuries at about 2.5 times the rate of women and from suicides at about twice the rate of women. Women in the military, however, have a slightly higher homicide rate than men., Conclusion: Injuries (unintentional injuries, suicides, and homicides) are the leading cause of death among active duty members of the U.S. Armed Forces, accounting for about four out of five deaths. The downward trend for fatal unintentional injuries indicates the success that can be achieved when attention is focused on preventing injuries. Further reduction in injury mortality would be facilitated if collection and coding of data were standardized across the military services.

We used data from the 1991 Longitudinal Follow-up to the National Maternal and Infant Health Survey to examine cumulative risk of injury among children from birth to three years old and to provide national-level cause-specific estimates of medically attended nonfatal injuries for this age group. Almost 25% of the 8,145 children reportedly received care for an injury between birth and three years old. Among the children with injuries, 25.4% reportedly had more than one medically attended injury. Risk of reported injury was higher for boys and upper level socioeconomic groups. Falls were the most frequently reported injury (51%), followed by burns (11.7%), striking or cutting injuries (9.8%), poisonings (9.8%), and injuries from devices not intended for the child's use (7.9%). Nonfatal injuries for preschool-age children present a pattern strikingly different from that of fatal injuries among this age group, and the need for this data is important in targeting prevention strategies.