This book includes detailed information on many of the factors surrounding injuries--the man-made systems and products involved, the groups at greatest risk, and effective ways to protect people from injuries. The circumstances under which injuries occur, the etiologic agents, and the characteristics of the people involved are examined. Chapter 2 summarizes the importance of injuries in relation to other prominent health problems. Subsequent chapters describe injury mortality and, in cases where good population-based studies are available, nonfatal injuries. The analyses in Chapters 3-15 are primarily of injury deaths during 1977-1979, the most recent years for which detailed mortality data were available in mid-1983 for deaths other than those related to motor vehicles. Most of these data were collected by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Chapters 16-20 summarize data on deaths from motor vehicle-related injuries. Most of these detailed data were obtained from the U.S. Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Data from the 1980 census provided denominators for the rates throughout the book, except for trendline calculations which were based on interpolations between census years. The purpose of this book is to improve understanding of the nature and magnitude of the injury problem in the United States. Although it includes some discussion of ameliorative approaches, there is no comprehensive coverage of injury research, theory, or prevention, since these have been comprehensively discussed elsewhere. This book is a thorough documentation of the injury problem. Most of the information presented is new, the product of analyses not previously published in any form.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3342319.pdf

The injury fact book

The Injury Fact Book

Importance: Over 30000 people die annually in the United States from injuries caused by firearms. Although most firearm laws are enacted by states, whether the laws are associated with rates of firearm deaths is uncertain. Objective: To evaluate whether more firearm laws in a state are associated with fewer firearm fatalities. Design:Usinganecologicalandcross-sectionalmethod, weretrospectivelyanalyzedallfirearm-relateddeathsreported to the Centers for Disease Control and PreventionWeb-basedInjuryStatisticsQueryandReportingSystemfrom2007through2010.Weusedstate-levelfirearm legislation across 5 categories of laws to create a “legislative strength score,” and measured the association of thescorewithstatemortalityratesusingaclusteredPoisson regression. States were divided into quartiles based on their score. Setting: Fifty US states.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articlepdf/1661390/iiq130121_732_740.pdf

Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States

Objectives. We examined the relationship between levels of household firearm ownership, as measured directly and by a proxy—the percentage of suicides committed with a firearm—and age-adjusted firearm homicide rates at the state level.Methods. We conducted a negative binomial regression analysis of panel data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Web-Based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting Systems database on gun ownership and firearm homicide rates across all 50 states during 1981 to 2010. We determined fixed effects for year, accounted for clustering within states with generalized estimating equations, and controlled for potential state-level confounders.Results. Gun ownership was a significant predictor of firearm homicide rates (incidence rate ratio = 1.009; 95% confidence interval = 1.004, 1.014). This model indicated that for each percentage point increase in gun ownership, the firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9%.Conclusions. We observed a robust correlation between higher le...

/pdf/the-relationship-between-gun-ownership-and-firearm-homicide-10gsoelfek.pdf

The Relationship Between Gun Ownership and Firearm Homicide Rates in the United States, 1981–2010

School shootings tear the fabric of society. In the wake of a school shooting, parents, pediatricians, policymakers, politicians, and the public search for "the" cause of the shooting. But there is no single cause. The causes of school shootings are extremely complex. After the Sandy Hook Elementary School rampage shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, we wrote a report for the National Science Foundation on what is known and not known about youth violence. This article summarizes and updates that report. After distinguishing violent behavior from aggressive behavior, we describe the prevalence of gun violence in the United States and age-related risks for violence. We delineate important differences between violence in the context of rare rampage school shootings, and much more common urban street violence. Acts of violence are influenced by multiple factors, often acting together. We summarize evidence on some major risk factors and protective factors for youth violence, highlighting individual and contextual factors, which often interact. We consider new quantitative "data mining" procedures that can be used to predict youth violence perpetrated by groups and individuals, recognizing critical issues of privacy and ethical concerns that arise in the prediction of violence. We also discuss implications of the current evidence for reducing youth violence, and we offer suggestions for future research. We conclude by arguing that the prevention of youth violence should be a national priority. (PsycINFO Database Record

/pdf/youth-violence-what-we-know-and-what-we-need-to-know-2dd4z8b123.pdf

Hemenway (David)

Papers

State-level homicide victimization rates in the US in relation to survey measures of household firearm ownership, 2001-2003.