CPSC was created in 1972 under the Consumer Product Safety Act to regulate consumer products that pose an unreasonable risk of injury, assist consumers in using products safely, develop uniform safety standards for consumer products, minimize conflicting state and local regulations, and promote research and investigation into product-related deaths, injuries, and illnesses. CPSC oversees about 15,000 types of consumer products used in the home, in schools, and in sports and recreation. In fiscal year 2008, CPSC carried out its mission with a budget of about $80 million and 396 full-time employees. Prior to 2008, CPSC experienced significant budget cuts and a sharp decline in its staffing level from a high of 978 employees in 1980. Congress appropriated increased funding totaling about $105 million for fiscal year 2009. This appropriation funds a staffing level of 483 full-time employees, according to CPSC’s 2010 budget request. CPSC uses different methods to inform the public about product recalls and safety practices that can help prevent product-related injuries (see fig. 1). CPSC maintains a National Injury Information Clearinghouse that disseminates information to the public related to deaths and injuries associated with consumer products under the agency’s jurisdiction. CPSC also warns the public about product hazards by announcing product recalls and providing other safety information through print and electronic media, a telephone hotline, electronic mail, and the Internet. For example, CPSC works with manufacturers to provide public notice of product recalls, in which a defective item is to be removed from store shelves and consumers are alerted to return the item for repair, replacement, or refund, or otherwise dispose of them. To further its reach, CPSC also provides safety information to broadcast outlets, such as radio and television stations, and to print media outlets. According to CPSC officials, CPSC has allocated approximately $1 million annually to support its consumer information efforts and has nine employees in the Office of Public Affairs, the office responsible for developing and implementing CPSC’s consumer information efforts in consultation with CPSC’s technical experts and other CPSC staff. Congress appropriated funding in 2009 to help CPSC administer the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act, including about $2.4 million for a state grant program and over $4 million for a program to inform the public and pool owners of pool and spa hazards to prevent children from drowning. Recently passed legislation requires CPSC to improve its consumer information activities. For example, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) requires CPSC to develop an online database that is publicly available and searchable by date, product name, model, and manufacturer. The database must contain reports of harm relating to the use of consumer products. CPSIA also specifies the information that must be included in a mandatory product recall notice, including details about related injuries and deaths. The act also authorizes CPSC to require manufacturers to give public notice in languages other than English, although this provision applies only to mandatory recalls, according to CPSC officials. While CPSC is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury and death from the thousands of types of consumer products under the agency’s jurisdiction, HHS offices and agencies also play a role in injury prevention by conducting injury prevention research and information campaigns, collecting injury data, and promoting the health of minority populations. For example, according to agency officials and documents, CDC and the National Institutes of Health support research on a variety of topics, including injury prevention, and have conducted public information campaigns to reduce childhood injury. CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) collects information about injuries, including race and ethnicity characteristics, from death certificates in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as from household surveys and health care provider surveys. The Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) and the Indian Health Service (IHS) finance public health services, including injury prevention programs. HHS offices and agencies also lead efforts aimed at understanding and addressing racial and ethnic disparities in health care, including rates of unintentional injury among minority groups. For example, HHS’s Office of Minority Health serves as a focal point within HHS to coordinate efforts to improve racial/ethnic minority health and eliminate racial/ethnic health disparities. The Office of Minority Health is charged with providing leadership and coordination for offices of minority health operating in other HHS agencies and in states to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities, according to agency officials. CDC is the lead agency charged with measuring progress toward national HHS goals to eliminate disparities in injuries, disabilities, and deaths due to unintentional injuries and violence. CPSC collects and analyzes data on consumer product-related injuries and deaths for products under its jurisdiction to determine where hazards exist and how to address them. CPSC obtains most of its information on injuries from its National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), which gathers information from a nationally representative sample of about 100 hospital emergency rooms. NEISS provides national estimates of the number and severity of emergency room-treated injuries associated with, although not necessarily caused by, consumer products in the United States. Characteristics coded in the NEISS system include the date of treatment; the patient’s age, gender, race and ethnicity, injury diagnosis, body part affected, case disposition; incident location; as well as the product involved. In 2000, NEISS was expanded to provide data on all trauma-related injuries. The expanded data provide other federal agencies, researchers, and the public with more comprehensive information on injuries from all sources, not just consumer products. CPSC receives approximately $2 million each year from CDC to support this effort. CPSC obtains most of its information on fatal injuries from death certificates. Information recorded on death certificates includes the date and place of death, cause of death, age, gender, race and ethnicity, and residence of the deceased. CPSC estimates the number of consumer product-related deaths from data collected by NCHS about all deaths through the National Vital Statistics System. Because of the complexity and volume of collecting information about all deaths, there is over a 2 year lag before NCHS mortality data become available. According to a CPSC official, to obtain more timely information, CPSC annually purchases about 8,000 death certificates directly from states for selected causes of death that the agency has determined are likely to be product- related, such as bicycle accidents or falls involving playground equipment. CPSC supplements information from the NEISS system and death certificates with reports from individual consumers and with data from private organizations such as fire prevention groups and poison control centers. CPSC collects approximately 4,600 additional reports from participating medical examiners and coroners throughout the country, about 7,400 news clips, and 14,300 other reports of product-related injuries and deaths from consumers, lawyers, physicians, fire departments, and other sources, according to its 2010 performance budget request. Although some research suggests racial disparities in child death rates resulting from general causes of injury—including drowning, poisoning, and suffocation—we identified few studies that assessed racial and ethnic differences in child death rates from injuries related to consumer products. The studies we identified included two that identified racial and ethnic disparities in drownings in swimming pools and a study that identified a disparity between black and white infants in the risk of suffocation or strangulation in bed. We did not identify any studies that compared the incidence of poisoning related to consumer products by children’s race and ethnicity. While these studies identified racial and ethnic differences in death rates related to specific products, the researchers were not consistently able to consider all factors that may contribute to these differences, such as differences in exposure to the consumer products. Mortality data reported by CDC suggest racial disparities in drowning rates, although these data do not specify whether the deaths involved consumer products. Drownings can occur in a variety of settings, such as natural water settings, swimming pools, bathtubs, and buckets. According to CDC, between 2000 and 2005, the fatal unintentional drowning rate of black children ages 5 to 14 was 3.2 times that of white children in the same age range. For American Indian and Alaska Native children, the fatal drowning rate was 2.4 times higher than for white children. One study, conducted by researchers from HHS’s National Institutes of Health, CPSC, and a research institute, found racial and ethnic disparities in swimming pool drowning rates. This study examined circumstances surrounding 678 swimming pool drownings among U.S. residents aged 5 to 24 years that occurred between 1995 and 1998. The study used data collected by CPSC about drowning deaths from death certificates, medical examiner reports, and newspaper clippings. The study found that black non-Hispanic males and females had higher swimming pool drowning rates compared with white non-Hispanic males and females of comparable age. Drowning rates were highest among black males, often occurring during the day at public pools, and this increased risk persisted after controlling for differences in neighborhood income. Hispanic males also had higher rates of pool drowning compared with white non-Hispanic males, but they had lower rates compared with black non-Hispanic males of comparable age. The drowning rates among Hispanic females were similar to those of white non-Hispanic females. The drowning rates among foreign-born victims were higher than among American-born victims. The study concluded that targeted interventions are needed to reduce the incidence of swimming pool drownings across racial and ethnic groups; it particularly recommended adult supervision at public pools and swimming instruction to increase children’s swimming ability. Another study examining racial disparities in drowning rates in specific locations found that after the age of 5 years, the risk of drowning in a swimming pool was greater among black males compared with white males. Specifically, this study analyzed death certificate data collected by CPSC and NCHS about U.S. drowning deaths of children aged up to 19 in 1995.