NASBLA Public Library

Recreational boating activity leads to a significant number of fatal and non-fatal injuries annually across the United States. With funding from the United States Coast Guard (USCG), Safe States Alliance and the National Association of State Boating Law Administrators (NASBLA), the Recreational Boat Occupant Injury Surveillance Project was created in 2018 to better understand the scope of non-fatal injuries that occur to all occupants of boats by bringing together public health expertise with boating safety professionals.

The Project is comprised of three tiers, including 1) Conduct boat occupant injury surveillance roundtable; 2) Develop surveillance recommendations through an injury surveillance workgroup (ISW) process; and 3) Test surveillance recommendations with pilot states. This report represents the work done as part of Tier 2 and is intended to serve as a manual for state-level public health experts and boating law administrators (or their designee) to work in partnership to improve injury surveillance in their jurisdictions as part of Tier 3. Because these partnerships will be new in most areas, the analyses and recommendations in this report are meant to be introductory. It is anticipated that a more refined report will be needed based on the findings from these introductory methods.