TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2021//
TI  - A comparison of child abuse and neglect encounters before and after school closings due to SARS-Cov-2
JO  - Child abuse and neglect
A1  - Salt, Elizabeth
A1  - Wiggins, Amanda T.
A1  - Cooper, Gena L.
A1  - Benner, Kalea
A1  - Adkins, Brian W.
A1  - Hazelbaker, Katherine
A1  - Rayens, Mary Kay
SP  - 105132
EP  - 105132
VL  - 118
IS  - 
N2  - BACKGROUND: Risk factors for child abuse and neglect and commonly used reporting mechanisms were highly affected by SARS-Cov-2 pandemic; yet, little is known about the effects of SARS-Cov-2 on rates of child abuse and neglect. <br><br>OBJECTIVE: To compare overall rates, demographics, types of abuse and acuity of child abuse and neglect encounters seen at one university health system for the 6 months before and after school closings due to the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Data was extracted from a database of billed ICD10 codes for child abuse and neglect including sexual abuse codes. There were 579 encounters for patients <18 years of age and 476 unique patients. <br><br>METHODS: In addition to ICD10 code and pre/post school closing, each encounter was identified to be inpatient, outpatient and/or emergency department. Demographic data such as age, gender, ethnicity, and race were extracted. Incident rate ratios in addition to descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test, two-sample t-test, or the chi-square test of association were used in the analysis. <br><br>RESULTS: No significant differences were identified for total rates of child abuse and neglect encounters (p = .08), physical abuse (p = .91) nor child maltreatment (p = .86) codes or in the age (p = .46), gender (p = .58), and race/ethnicity (p = .15) of patient encounters pre- versus post-school closings. The sexual abuse incidence and inpatient encounters increased by 85% (IRR = 1.85, p < .0001; IRR = 1.85, p = .004, respectively). <br><br>CONCLUSIONS: Our findings provide a unique contribution to the existing literature in that we identified a significant increase in the incidence of sexual abuse and higher patient acuity as evidenced by higher rates of inpatient encounters after school closing due to SARS-Cov-2.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0145-2134
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2021.105132
ID  - ref1
ER  -