Summary: Surprising study reveals urban areas are safer than rural communities — when it comes to injury prevention.
By Joanne Van Zuidam | Posted: July 24, 2013
A new study challenges the belief that cities are more dangerous than the suburbs and the country. The reason: unintentional injuries.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have found that risk of death from an injury — car accidents, shootings, poisonings, falls, etc. — was 20 percent lower in urban counties compared to suburban and rural counties nationwide.
"Perceptions have long existed that cities were innately more dangerous than areas outside of cities, but our study shows this is not the case," said lead study author, Sage R. Myers, MD, MSCE, assistant professor of Pediatrics, Perelman School of Medicine and attending physician, Department of Emergency Medicine at CHOP in a university statement.
Myers said that the risk of homicide is what most people think of in terms of safety in large cities, and homicide rates are indeed higher in big cities. But even so, her study team found the risk of unintentional death due to injury was 40 percent higher in rural regions. Plus, the overall numbers of accidental deaths dwarf those from homicide.
The study found the bulk of unintentional injury deaths were from motor vehicle crashes, with motor vehicle injury-related deaths occurring at a rate that is more than 1.4 times higher than the next leading cause of injury death.
In rural areas, this difference is even more pronounced, where motor vehicle injury-related death rates are twice that of the next leading injury mechanism. And in rural areas, the risk of motor vehicle-related injury death is two times more likely compared to the urban areas.
The study, published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, examined county-level data on all injury deaths across the U.S. from 1999-2006.
"We hope the findings could also lead us to re-evaluate our rural health care system and more appropriately equip it to both prevent and treat the health threats that actually exist."
The bottom line: Injury prevention is in an important health issue — no matter you live.
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