Eye On Illinois: Data dashboards useful starting point for connecting with elected officials

Numbers tell a story, but rarely without help.

In January, the Illinois Department of Public Health launched a new data dashboard split into two focus areas: gun injury rates and violent deaths. The intent, per an agency news release, is a county-level breakdown to provide input for evidence-based intervention and prevention efforts.

The numbers come from the Illinois Violent Death Reporting System at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and the health department’s emergency room visit surveys, both of which rely on funding from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

So why write about this nearly five months after the news release? Aside from choosing to focus on the legislative session throughout the spring, it also seemed worth waiting to see if these new dashboards contributed to any statewide policy discussions before assessing their utility.

The violent deaths dashboard (tinyurl.com/ViolentDeaths) only has information from 2015-2022. One useful chart shows the percentage of deaths recorded in the system spiking from 61.1% to 98% over that span, and it’s worth noting that death by suicide accounts for between 47% and 56.6% in each annual tally.

The subheadings do contain a great amount of information (17% of homicides filed under “an argument or conflict led to death” compared with 7.3% from “non-alcohol substance abuse problem”) but with the caveat that nothing from the past two-plus years is included, there are limits on how much such data can contribute to preventive action.

However, the firearm page (tinyurl.com/ILFirearmRates) has monthly breakdowns from January 2018 through May 2025. A line graph is based on gun injuries as a percentage of emergency room visits. That formula contributed to a noticeable peak in June 2020, when 1,072 gun injuries accounted for 320 per 100,000. It’s not the busiest month of individual injuries, but it happened at a time when overall ER visits were otherwise fewer than usual.

Since this dashboard allows isolation by year, it’s easier to formulate an understanding of nearly current conditions while also having the ability to contextualize with longer-term trends. But ultimately, both sets, whether macro or micro, require substantial dot connecting to yield policy recommendations.

For the average Illinoisan, this information is helpful context when communicating with elected officials, from the Statehouse down to the city council, both as a check to see whether their rhetoric matches the available data as well as a simple starting point for dialogue. If you take the time to click through the graphs and charts, make some notes about what stands out, and send an email to ask if your official has seen the same information and drawn any conclusions.

The government leverages public and private resources to collect these figures. Citizens can help ensure the process is worthwhile.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.