A comparison of child abuse and neglect encounters before and after school closings due to SARS-Cov-2.
Child Abuse Negl
; 118: 105132, 2021 08.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1240229
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:
Risk factors for child abuse and neglect and commonly used reporting mechanisms were highly affected by SARS-Cov-2 pandemic; yet, little is known about the effects of SARS-Cov-2 on rates of child abuse and neglect.OBJECTIVE:
To compare overall rates, demographics, types of abuse and acuity of child abuse and neglect encounters seen at one university health system for the 6 months before and after school closings due to the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic. PARTICIPANTS ANDSETTING:
Data was extracted from a database of billed ICD10 codes for child abuse and neglect including sexual abuse codes. There were 579 encounters for patients <18 years of age and 476 unique patients.METHODS:
In addition to ICD10 code and pre/post school closing, each encounter was identified to be inpatient, outpatient and/or emergency department. Demographic data such as age, gender, ethnicity, and race were extracted. Incident rate ratios in addition to descriptive statistics, Mann-Whitney U test, two-sample t-test, or the chi-square test of association were used in the analysis.RESULTS:
No significant differences were identified for total rates of child abuse and neglect encounters (p = .08), physical abuse (p = .91) nor child maltreatment (p = .86) codes or in the age (p = .46), gender (p = .58), and race/ethnicity (p = .15) of patient encounters pre- versus post-school closings. The sexual abuse incidence and inpatient encounters increased by 85% (IRR = 1.85, p < .0001; IRR = 1.85, p = .004, respectively).CONCLUSIONS:
Our findings provide a unique contribution to the existing literature in that we identified a significant increase in the incidence of sexual abuse and higher patient acuity as evidenced by higher rates of inpatient encounters after school closing due to SARS-Cov-2.Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Schools
/
Child Abuse
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Observational study
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Adolescent
/
Child
/
Child, preschool
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Infant
/
Male
Language:
English
Journal:
Child Abuse Negl
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
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