As a young family physician, living and working in Camden, New Jersey, in the early 2000s,

Dr. Jeff Brenner started to notice something about his patients.

We were in the most dangerous city in the country, and I had people come into my office and

I would take staples out, I'd take stitches out, and they had been beaten, they'd been

stabbed, they'd been shot, and I'd ask them, this is horrible, did you report your crime

to the police?

And they'd sort of laugh at me and say, I'd never call the police here, honestly at

the time I couldn't get my head around that.

And I realized despite the fact that statistically, we were the most dangerous city in the country,

that the true crime rate was probably much, much higher than we realized.

Jeff had an idea, perhaps emergency room and hospital data, could paint a more accurate

picture of crime in Camden, New Jersey.

He asked for and received claims data from local hospitals and health centers.

We didn't know idea what we were doing.

We stuck it in Microsoft Access, we mapped it, graphed it, charted it, and the data was

eye popping.

We found out that in the census tract, right next to the hospital, in a one year period,

one in 15 kids are beaten up badly enough to come to the emergency room.

And it was just like in rates that were so staggering and shocking.

And here we had this hospital data sitting in claims databases, it never really used

as a tool to understand public safety.

They got claims data from two other local hospitals and the findings were similar.

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