Correlates of Intentional and Unintentional Firearm-Related Injuries Among Pediatric Hospital Patients

ABSTRACT

Gun violence has continued to be the leading cause of pediatric injuries in recent years (CDC, 2022). Given the sparse literature on this topic, the current study examined correlates of the types of firearm-related injuries (i.e. intentional and unintentional) among pediatric patients within the Trauma Services Division of a Level-1 pediatric hospital (N = 87). The results indicated that patients in later developmental stages, particularly adolescence, and those with higher ACE score were significantly more likely to experience an intentional firearm injury, whereas white patients were significantly less likely to experience an intentional firearm injury, highlighting the structural factors that increase the risk of firearm violence including poverty and systemic racism. We discuss the implications and need for expanded hospital- and school-based violence prevention programs.

KEYWORDS:

• Intentional
• unintentional
• gun violence
• pediatrics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical standards and informed consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation [institutional and national] and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

Notes

¹ Only one patient in the sample reported a self-inflicted intentional firearm injury.

² There was a total of 155 individuals with gunshot wound injuries served at the hospital during the data collection period. However, due to missing data across the variables on the ACEs question, 64 individuals were dropped from the analyses and 4 individuals were dropped from the analyses that were over the age of 17.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by funding from the Urban Child Institute, The Children’s Foundation of Memphis, and the Assisi Foundation of Memphis to Eraina Schauss, Principal Investigator.