PRESS RELEASE
DR. MARIO MARAZZI‐SANTIAGO
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

February 22, 2018

AUTHORIZED STATEMENTS BY THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF STATISTICS REGARDING THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE UNIVERSITY OF PUERTO RICO AND GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY REGARDING THE STATISTICS OF DEATHS RELATED TO HURRICANES IRMA AND MARIA

Today, we welcomed with great joy the formalization of an agreement between the University of Puerto Rico and George Washington University for the purpose of studying the deaths associated with hurricanes Irma and María.

We have learned that a group of researchers from George Washington University will collaborate in this project, and a group of researchers from the University of Puerto Rico, a public entity that is part of and belongs to the Government of Puerto Rico. We think it's excellent that the research team includes not only experts from outside Puerto Rico, but also people with local knowledge and expertise.

On behalf of the Institute of Statistics, we take this opportunity to make available to researchers from both educational entities our expertise and experience with the Death Registration System of the Government of Puerto Rico. As is public knowledge, the Institute of Statistics has worked with the System in the past and, thanks to our intervention, problems were identified and corrected by the Demographic Registry in accounting for deaths and classification of related causes. Our findings resulted in improvements in the quality of these statistics that have been recognized by the American Statistical Association.

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Press Contact: Sandra Morales Blanes (787) 688-0401

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Authorized Statements by Dr. Mario Marazzi-Santiago, Executive Director of the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics, on Statistics of Occupied Government Positions

Carolina, Puerto Rico. May 12, 2025. The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute held the forum “From Violence to Dialogue: Understanding and Preventing the Social Crisis”, an event that brought together leading professionals from various disciplines to analyze, from an evidence-based approach, the multiple expressions of violence faced by Puerto Rico.

The program included presentations on armed violence, drug trafficking, intimate partner violence, femicide, education, social inequality and suicide. Each presentation was based on statistical evidence and proposals to strengthen public policies aimed at prevention.

The keynote speech was given by Dr. César A. Rey Hernández, who presented a sociological perspective on the links between inequality, education and violence. In his presentation “Whoever opens a school door closes a prison”, Dr. Rey highlighted that Puerto Rico is facing a profound crisis of school dropout, youth migration, child poverty and the deterioration of the social fabric. He said that in Puerto Rico there are more drug outlets than public schools, reflecting the limited opportunities available to young people and the impact of an expanding informal and illegal economy. Dr. Rey emphasized the urgency of an educational project with a humanistic approach, capable of responding to the ethical and social challenges of the present.

Another of the forum's outstanding topics was suicide prevention, in which demographer Raúl Figueroa Rodríguez, consultant to the Commission for Suicide Prevention, offered an analysis of recent trends, revealing that Puerto Rico reports an annual average of 265 suicides, of which 85% are men, pointing out that the highest rates are recorded in municipalities in central Puerto Rico and in its island municipalities, and that more than 50% of cases are among people over 50 years of age. Figueroa presented the Puerto Rico Socioeconomic Vulnerability Index for Suicide (IVSS-PR), a tool developed to guide community interventions, resource allocation and evidence-based public policy formulation.

During the event, issues such as domestic violence, feminicide, possession of weapons, drug trafficking and the role of public health in preventing violence were also addressed. The program included the participation of experts in epidemiology, criminal justice, demography and officials from state and federal agencies, who shared updated data and multisectoral strategies.

“The purpose of this forum was to provide in-depth and rigorous analysis that serves as a basis for making informed decisions. Our responsibility as an Institute is to ensure that data is at the service of the life, security and dignity of all people in Puerto Rico,” said Dr. Orville M. Disdier Flores, Executive Director of the Institute of Statistics, who added that “this forum reinforces the Institute's commitment to continue generating and disseminating reliable information that allows us to understand the roots of violence, promote social dialogue and strengthen the formulation of evidence-based public policies.”

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is an autonomous governmental entity responsible for coordinating the Government's statistical production service to ensure that the data collection and statistics systems, on which public policies are based, are complete, reliable, and have quick and universal access.

For more information you can write to preguntas@estadisticas.pr. They can also follow social networks through Facebook (@estadisticas .pr), X (@EstadisticasPR), LinkedIn (Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico) and Instagram (@institutodeestadisticas) accounts.

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