Barcelona Maps Preventable Injuries

Every year in Barcelona, preventable injuries kill almost 600 people and send 70,000 people to the hospital for emergency or in-patient care. Until recently, Barcelona’s health department lacked the surveillance system needed to create a more complete picture of where and why these incidents occur—and what could be done to get the numbers down.

A new injury surveillance system is helping changing this. Developed with support from the Partnership for Healthy Cities, the system connects more than 60 indicators tracking preventable injuries in the city.

We spoke to Dr. Catherine Perez, Head of Health Promotion at Barcelona’s Public Health Agency of Barcelona to learn more. Here’s what she told us.

Why do cities need injury surveillance systems?

Injuries are a significant public health challenge so having access to better data is crucial to reducing rates. Injury surveillance systems help to do just this, providing cities with tools to analyze and identify injury patterns, target high-risk areas, allocate resources effectively and develop and inform equitable public health policies.

What does this mean for Barcelona specifically?

Having a local surveillance system to track injuries helps us address challenges and risk factors specific to our context, including road safety and mobility; home, work and leisure activities; and things like violence, self-harm, falls and drowning.

By improving and increasing our access to data and categorizing information—including by type, severity, age, gender and socioeconomic areas—it allows us to implement interventions with greater precision. Importantly, these systems also strengthen collaboration across city government departments, including public health, transportation and urban planning, leading to a more coordinated approach to injury prevention. This is really crucial for reducing injury rates overall.

What kind of information is collected about injuries to make the surveillance system useful for prevention efforts?

The system integrates 60 indicators based on international classifications, including 28 specific road traffic injury indicators. So, this is data from routine health records, such as emergency and hospitalization data, as well as mortality data.

By contrast, our old injury information system only collected data on road traffic injuries. So, it’s been exciting to have access to this expanded information. Like any routine information system, it has limitations. But a big advantage is that it follows national and international standards, as well as being low cost and sustainable.

In the future, we also plan to include primary care information, covering everything from more minor injuries to death.

What will this injury surveillance system mean in terms of actual programs and policies that make cities safer?

The aim is always to transform the data into actionable measures. For example, the information gathered can be used to guide safer urban planning, such as redesigning high-risk intersections or pedestrian areas, lowering speeds or supporting evidence-based policies, like promoting road safety for cyclists and pedestrians.  Falls can be reduced through safer urban design, elderly balance programs and home adaptations.

The system also seeks to optimize our emergency response in the city by ensuring that resources are efficiently allocated to areas with high injury rates. By identifying injury patterns across districts, we can reduce inequities in health by addressing health promotion.

It also helps us strengthen the city’s capacity to adapt to emerging risks like e-scooter crashes or injuries during public events, and to prepare for global threats like climate-related challenges.

What can other cities learn from the work that is being done in Barcelona?

This injury surveillance system offers a roadmap for other cities looking to protect their residents. The key lessons? Comprehensive data collection, strong partnerships across sectors, and equity-focused strategies are essential for creating evidence-based policies that truly improve community health and wellbeing.

Want to find out more? Swipe below to learn more about how other cities in the Partnership are strengthening surveillance systems.

Contact us at cities4health@vitalstrategies.org for more information.