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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Pan American Health Organization works with the Institute of Statistics to collect statistics on Puerto Rico's mental health system

The Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics has a new president of its Board of Directors

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute (Institute) has a new president of its Board of Directors. The Board elected Dr. Javier Hernández Acosta as president, after the expiry of the term as board member of the past president, Nicolás Muñoz Muñoz. Dr. Hernández is a professor and director of the School of Arts, Design and Creative Industries at the Sacred Heart University. Similarly, Dr. Hernández is the Founder of Cultural Investment and the Center for Creative Economy, Inc., non-profit organizations that support the development of cultural and creative industries in Puerto Rico. Dr. Hernández has been a member of the Board of Directors since October 2020 and prior to that role he collaborated as a researcher on several projects of the Institute such as the World Values Survey (2018), the Innovation Survey (2015) And the Science and Technology Survey: Research and Development (2015).

Members of the Board of Directors do not earn compensation for their services. The Board is composed, in addition to Dr. Javier Hernández Acosta, Mrs. Carola Ballester Descartes, vice-president, Dr. José A. Jorge Pagán, secretary, Mr. Vicente Feliciano Pérez, Dr. Francisco E. Martínez Aponte and Mr. Manuel Laboy. This Board of Directors, as established in Act 209 of August 28, 2003, is the governing body that establishes the administrative policy of the Institute, which is led by Dr. Orville M. Disdier, Executive Director. “The Institute's relevance increases every day with the need for greater transparency and accessibility to information sources to support decision-making. It is up to us to guarantee its autonomy and fiscal sustainability so that it can continue to expand its impact. It is a great responsibility to support this management from the Board of Directors,” said Dr. Hernández, president of the Board of Directors.

The Puerto Rico Statistics Institute is a governmental entity with fiscal and administrative autonomy with the mission of coordinating the statistical production service of government entities. To learn more about the Institute of Statistics, you can access the website: www.estadisticas.pr.gov. On social media through Facebook (@estadisticas .pr), Instagram (@estadisticas .pr), Twitter (@EstadisticasPR) and LinkedIn (Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico) accounts.

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For questions and more information write to the following email: preguntas@estadisticas.pr