Taking Aim at Firearm Injuries in Urban and Rural Settings :

Epidemiologic studies regarding the prevalence of firearm injuries and their etiology seem to be appearing with increased frequency in our journal and others. This month is no exception.  Herrin et al. (10.1542/peds.2017-3318) share with us an analysis of data of a national inpatient database collected in 2006, 2009, and 2012 to evaluate the etiology and setting for firearm injuries in children and adolescents leading to hospitalization.  The authors report on over 21,500 hospitalizations for firearm injuries in young patients and note some interesting differences in the types of injuries depending on age of the child and location where that child lives (urban versus rural setting).  If you are looking for ways to prevent intentional and unintentional firearm injuries, this study provides a lot of useful information that may help better direct more targeted strategies for injury prevention in children from firearm injuries.  Rather than tell you whether urban or rural settings are more likely to have an increased prevalence of unintentional firearm injuries, or what ages and settings predispose to an increased number of intentional injuries, we want you to read the study for yourself and find out. Hopefully the data in this study will help trigger appropriate community safety and education programs that will be better directed against the causes for firearm injury, specific to the ages and settings where intentional and unintentional injuries are occurring. And sadly, more often than anyone would like (which is never).