Citation

Reading R, Haynes R, Shenassa ED. Child. Youth Environ. 2005; 15(1): 165-185.

Affiliation

School of Medicine, Health Policy, and Practice and the School of Environmental Sciences at Univ of East Anglia, UK; Brown Medical School and Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine, Miriam Hospital Providence, Rhode Island, USA

Copyright

(Copyright © 2005, University of Cincinnati)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Childhood injuries are the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in developed nations, and there are wide disparities between children from rich and poor backgrounds. Recent developments in regression modeling have enabled researchers to begin disentangling influences at the child, the household, the local neighborhood and the larger area levels, all of which contribute to determining and maintaining these social inequalities in childhood injury. We describe recent research on neighborhood influences on injury risk with a focus on children, and provide a detailed critique of the three large population-based studies carried out by our groups in the UK and U.S. These studies demonstrate that residence in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of poverty and poor quality housing is associated with an elevated risk of child injuries independent of any risks attributable to individual household characteristics. Future work in this area will need to collect more detailed household socioeconomic data and improve the characterization of neighborhoods. Despite these deficiencies, there is sufficient evidence to support neighborhood interventions to reduce child injury risk. These include improvements in housing quality, community development, neighborhood-based approaches to changing social and cultural behavior and attitudes of adults and children, and greater social heterogeneity in neighborhoods. These would reduce, but not replace, the need to narrow the social and economic disparities between rich and poor if we are to reduce inequalities in child injury.

Available: http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye/15_1/a8_NeighborhoodInjury.pdf