Alarming
numbers of violent injuries among schoolchildren
University
of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Nearly
1 in 5 fifth-graders has received violent injuries, the majority delivered by
guns or knives, according to recently published research by The University of
Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).
The
study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, analyzed data
from 4,300 children when they were in fifth, seventh, and 10th grades at public
schools in districts in and around cities in three U.S. communities: Houston,
Los Angeles County, and Birmingham, Alabama. The children were questioned over
time to see whether the number and type of injury changed.
The
likelihood of injury increased as children became older, with 1 in 3 high
school-age children sustaining a gunshot, stabbing wound, or assault-related
injury needing medical attention.
According
to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which funded the
research, bullying is common in high schools nationwide. These findings shed
new light on the type of injuries occurring among children and who is most
affected -- bullies or victims of bullying.
"The biggest surprise was the sheer scale of intentional violent injuries children are suffering, even at elementary school age. It was also unexpected to discover how it's not bullying victims, but bullies themselves who are most likely to get seriously hurt," said first author Katelyn Jetelina, PhD, MPH.
"This suggests the act of bullying may not necessarily be violent enough
for victims to sustain serious injuries, and that bullies may be involved in
other harmful behaviors."
Jetelina is an assistant professor of
epidemiology, human genetics, and environmental sciences at UTHealth School of
Public Health in Dallas.
"It's
a first-of-its-kind look at how the injuries are sustained among school-age
children and whether these are different for repeat bullying victims and repeat
perpetrators," Jetelina said.
"The interviews were conducted
privately to improve reliability, but underreporting is still a potential
issue, so the problem could be even worse."
Data
were obtained from Healthy Passages, a study of children and their primary
caregivers followed from fifth through 10th grade between 2004 and 2011.
That
study's principal investigators were Susan Tortolero Emery, PhD, of UTHealth
School of Public Health; Susan Davies, PhD, of The University of Alabama at
Birmingham Center for the Study of Community Health; and Mark Schuster, MD,
PhD, of Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine, who is also senior author of this
paper.
In
fifth grade, 16.7 percent of children sustained at least one violent injury
including firearm injuries (12.5 percent), knife injuries (8.4 percent), and
medically attended fighting-related injuries (3.6 percent). The volume and type
of injury escalated in later years, especially among bullies.
On
average, bullies were 41 percent more likely to be violently injured than other
children. By 10th grade, more than a quarter of their injuries were from
firearms, the research showed.
"The
evidence suggests perpetrators are engaging in various risky behaviors in
addition to bullying. This builds as they get older, which may indicate
involvement in gangs, as well as drug and alcohol use," Jetelina said.
Boys
were 22 percent more likely to sustain violent injury than girls, and black
children were 30 percent more likely to experience injury than other
race/ethnicity groups, according to the results of the study.
Children from
lower-income families were also more vulnerable. Those whose parents were
widowed had a 60 percent higher chance of reporting a violent injury, Jetelina
reported.
"Injury
is a leading cause of death for schoolchildren and this research reflects the
epidemic. It also underlines the importance of early intervention and
prevention strategies that target specific groups," Jetelina said.
"Future studies examining factors such as weapon access and gang
involvement are necessary to understand more about the pathway of bully perpetrators,
why they are being injured so much, and what can be done to stop this spiraling
problem."