Citation

Levine RS, Schneid RP, Zoorob RJ, Hennekens CH. Am. J. Med. 2019; 132(1): 3-5.

Affiliation

First Sir Richard Doll Professor & Senior Academic Advisor to the Dean, Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine, Florida Atlantic University, Adjunct Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Baylor Medical College. Electronic address: PROFCHHMD@prodigy.net.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.amjmed.2018.08.013

PMID

30148979

Abstract

Deaths from homicide are a major public health problem in the United States and throughout the world. Further, the United States has experienced homicide rates that are 6.9 times higher than those in other high income countries throughout the world, and the vast majority are attributable to firearms1 For many decades there have been striking regional variations between various cities throughout the United States in deaths from homicide and size is a major determinant.2 In addition, there has been considerable publicity about high rates of homicide in some major cities like Chicago and low rates in others like New York City.3

We noted that New York City (specifically, each of the four boroughs of Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens) and Baltimore City are defined as peers by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention according to 19 population-based characteristics (population size, percent foreign born, median household income, population growth, percent high school graduates, receipt of government financial assistance, population density, single parent households, Gini index of income inequality, population mobility, median home value, overall poverty, percent children, housing stress, elderly poverty, percent elderly, percent owner-occupied housing units, unemployment and sex ratio).4 In addition, New York City and Baltimore City have been identified as components of the “northeastern megalopolis”,5 a highly and densely populated area of interconnected communities constituting an organic cultural region with a distinct history and identity, occupying a roughly similar physical environment, linked through a major transportation infrastructure and forming a functional urban network via goods and service flows, ultimately establishing a usable geography that is suitable for large-scale regional planning.6 All these circumstances provided a unique opportunity to explore secular trends in homicide rates overall as well as by race in New York City and Baltimore City ...

Language: en