Circumstances Surrounding Pediatric Firearm Injuries in New York City
Jennifer R. Grad, Nina Agrawal, Selin T. Sagalowsky, Emelia M. Suljić, Charles DiMaggio, Olushola Fapo, Simon Fitzgerald, Haamid S. Chamdawala, Edward Chao, George Agriantonis, Muhammad Waseem, Christina L. Bi, Michael J. KleinObjectives:
We aimed to describe pediatric firearm incidents treated at 6 New York City public trauma hospitals over a 5-year period.
Methods:
We conducted a retrospective, multi-institutional, descriptive study of firearm-related incidents among patients below 18 years treated at 6 municipal trauma centers in New York City from July 1, 2016, to June 30, 2021. We used trauma registries, electronic health records (EHR), and geospatial analysis, supplemented with Gun Violence Archive (GVA) and New York Police Department data to characterize and map incidents, excluding missing data.
Results:
Of n=176 patients, data on injury intent and circumstances were unavailable for 13% (n=22) and 22% (n=38), respectively. Most were male (n=161, 91%), Black (n=133, 76%), and adolescents (median 16 y, IQR: 15, 17) who sustained nonfatal (n=166, 94%) assaults (n=151, 98%). Limited available data suggests that identified assailants were unknown to the unintentional victims of community violence. Incidents largely occurred on weekdays (n=133, 76%); between 15:00 and 20:59 (n=72, 42%); and outside a residential home (n=149, 93%), including sidewalk/street (n=85, 53%) and playground/park/basketball court (n=25, 16%). The most common circumstances were running/jogging/walking outside (n=54, 39%), altercation involvement (n=32, 23%), and drive-by (n=27, 20%). Fifty-four percent (n=72) of incidents occurred within 0.2 miles of public housing in 3 primary geospatial clusters. GVA and New York Police Department databases suggest between 39% and 46% capture of relevant incidents.
Conclusions:
Regional gun violence data suffers from a lack of standardization and missingness across sources. Nonetheless, triangulating available data from trauma registries, EHR, GVA, and geospatial analysis, we found that most pediatric patients were Black, adolescent, unintended victims who sustained assaults on weekdays, outside a home, and within 0.2 miles of public housing in 3 primary clusters. These results may inform hospital data surveillance and ongoing evidence-based prevention strategies.