|
|
Post by the Scribe on Apr 22, 2022 7:21:17 GMT
GOP's Fake Concern For Kids Misses #1 Killer of Children
The GOP pretends to care about children but all they do is attack transgender people, and ignore the number one killer of children... Guns
|
|
|
|
Post by the Scribe on Apr 22, 2022 7:26:48 GMT
HEALTHCARE
The Leading Cause Of Death In Children And Youths Is Now Guns
www.forbes.com/sites/ninashapiro/2022/04/18/the-leading-cause-of-death-in-children-and-youths-is-now-guns/?sh=239650de1705
Nina Shapiro Contributor
Dispelling health myths, fads, exaggerations and misconceptions.
Accidents and injuries remain the leading cause of death for children and young adults. Until recently, motor vehicle accidents were the number one cause of accidental death in these age groups. But in recent years, gun-related injuries surpassed motor vehicle accidents as the most common cause of death in youths and children, and this number continues to increase each year.
An article published in the April 16, 2022 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reviewed this change, and discussed implications and likely reasons for this shift. The authors, based at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Department of Health Policy and Management at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard, delineated the public implications of this shift. The authors first describe how accidental injury is the leading cause of death in children and adolescents. In fact, accidents remain the leading cause of death among all individuals between ages 1 and 44 years. Congenital abnormalities remain the leading cause of death in the first year of life.
www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2200169
www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/animated-leading-causes.html
While accidents in general remain the most common cause of death in youth, for those ages 1 to 24 years, death due to gun violence and accidental injury are now more common than death due to motor vehicle accidents. While accidents and resultant injuries and fatalities are hard to reduce down to zero or even close to that, there are multiple means of prevention when it comes to reducing risk. Safety measures in motor vehicles such as seat belts, air bags, rear cameras, infant and toddler safety seats and lane change alert systems have all helped to reduce risks on the road. However, increased use of cellphones and continued cases of driving while intoxicated have acted to counter many safety measures.
www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/811867_two_comm_distracted_driving_prog_reduce_handheld_phone_use_tt.pdf
What has also made a significant impact in improvement of motor vehicle safety from a public health standpoint is better data systems initiated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Association (NHTSA) to track outcomes of traffic-related injuries and deaths. Such analysis has enabled safety measures to be instituted in a regulated fashion over the past several decades. The outcome has been a continued annual reduction in vehicular deaths in the pediatric and young adult population.
www.nhtsa.gov/research-data/fatality-analysis-reporting-system-fars
In 2000, over 13,000 young people died due to motor vehicular-related injuries. In 2020, just over 8,000 deaths in the young population were recorded, which is a reduction of over 40% over the past two decades. In contrast, there were just under 7,000 firearm-related deaths in those ages 1- to 24-years in 2000, and over 10,000 deaths in 2020. In this time period, while motor vehicle safety measures have increased, in concert with increased federal funding to reduce these injuries and deaths, there was little, if any, federal funding for firearm safety research between 1996 and 2019.
The Dickey Amendment arose in the early 1990’s as a means of blocking assessment of gun-related injuries as a public health measure. While in 2018 one of the compromises in the government spending bill enabled the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to engage in gun safety research, the amount of funding that would be provided remained unclear.
ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304450
The incidence in firearm-related deaths in youths began to climb in 2014, leveled off between 2016 and 2019, and then rose again sharply in 2020. Motor vehicular-related deaths dropped in this age group between 2016 and 2019, and went up slightly (although not nearly as precipitously as the rate of gun-related deaths) in 2020.
Accidental deaths, whether truly by accident or by injuries due to intent, by any means, are, in large part, preventable. Access to firearms by children, by unlicensed owners, and absence of safety measures when it comes to both intentional and unintentional gun-related injuries and deaths, are among the reasons that the incidence of this horrific, truly avoidable tragedy is on the rise.
Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.
|
|
