Original articlePrediction of Child Abuse Risk from Emergency Department Use
Section snippets
Methods
This population-based case-control study compares ED utilization patterns between Utah-born children with a supported Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS) child abuse report for whom the initial disclosure of abuse occurred between January 1, 2001, and December 31, 2002, and age-matched control subjects. This study was approved by the University of Utah Institutional Review Board and Division of Child and Family Services Institutional Review Board. A Waiver of Informed Consent was
Cases
There were 19 005 children in the state of Utah with supported abuse during the study period. Of these, 52% (n = 9795) met study inclusion criteria. Of those children who were excluded, 46% (n = 4459) were due to age ≥13 years, 40% (n = 3888) for not having a Utah birth record, and 9% (n = 863) for ineligible abuse type.
The majority (79%) of the cases were white, reflecting the general population of Utah (89.2% white),18 58% (n = 5718) had a parent with a valid Utah driver license during the
Discussion
This study has 3 major findings. First, most children with supported abuse are not seen in the ED before the diagnosis of abuse. Specifically, although there is a two times greater number of visits in cases than in control subjects, this only changes the visit rate from a median of 1 to 2 visits before the diagnosis of abuse. In addition, this difference in ED visits decreases even further when stratified by insurance status. Second, most visits occur 1 month or more before the finding of
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Cited by (0)
Supported by a National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) grant for Dr. Guenther (K23HD043145). Partial support for all datasets within the Utah Population Database is being provided by the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest.