"These results highlight the challenges of helping parents do better by their children and the importance of effective prevention programs to reduce serious abusive injuries in young children," said John M. Leventhal, M.D., professor of pediatrics and nursing at Yale, and director of the Child Abuse Programs at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital.
Leventhal and co-author Julie R. Gaither, graduate student in the Yale School of Public Health, studied data from the Kids' Inpatient Database (KID), a sample of discharges from hospitals in the United States. They examined trends in serious injuries related to child abuse from 1997 to 2009. Cases of serious physical injury, such as head injuries, fractures, burns, and abdominal injuries, were identified using different injury codes. The KID also provides information on demographics, including a child's age, gender, race, and health insurance; whether the child died during hospitalization; and the length of hospital stay. Leventhal and Gaither found that the number of children hospitalized due to abuse-related injuries has increased by 4.9 percent over those 12 years.
Leventhal said the difference in results between the two studies highlights the challenge of using a single source of data to track a complex problem such as child abuse. "We also need to develop and fund effective prevention programs," said Leventhal.
Source: Eurekalert