Kids living in the poorest neighborhoods are up to 20 times more likely to be shot than their peers living in well-off areas, a new multi-state study found. Researchers at Northwestern Medicine analyzed nearly 7,000 pediatric gun injuries and mapped the odds of getting shot by ZIP code. Their study, published in August in the journal Pediatrics, found that kids in “low-opportunity” neighborhoods were far more likely to be shot than those in “high-opportunity” areas.
They looked at gun injuries that occurred in Florida, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin between 2016 and 2021. They paired the injury information with data that ranks neighborhoods based on education, health and socioeconomic factors.
“Our study shows that where you and your family live is directly tied to your child’s odds of being injured or killed by a firearm,” Dr. Anne Stey, senior study author and Northwestern Medicine trauma surgeon, said in a statement. “Unintentional injuries, which are often preventable, make up the largest share of these cases.”
In fact, the study found that most gun injury hospitalizations for kids under the age of 18 are from unintentional shootings. The study says an unintentional shooting is caused by the mishandling or accidental discharge of a firearm.
According to Northwestern, this is the first multi-state study to examine how children’s neighborhood conditions are linked to firearm violence — the current leading cause of death for American kids. The paper was funded by families who have lost children to firearm violence, the study disclosed.
The findings in this study could be a useful data point for reporters looking to cover how firearm violence is a major threat to kids and how environmental factors like the frequency of shootings in a neighborhood has major impacts on children’s health and safety.
This study could be done on a smaller scale in your city or state. What ZIP codes in your coverage area have the highest gun violence rates? Do those ZIP codes struggle in other ways, such as health, education, housing and other socioeconomic factors?
How they did it
Researchers examined hospital discharge data for nearly 7,000 gun injuries and paired those records with Child Opportunity Index (COI) data. COI ZIP code data ranks neighborhoods from very low- to very high-opportunity based on education, health and socioeconomic factors.
“The fewer opportunities a child has in their neighborhood, the greater their odds of ending up in the hospital with a firearm injury,” Dr. Mehul Raval, a co-author on the study and the head of pediatric surgery at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, said in a statement.
Between those two sets of data, researchers were able to identify “hot spots” of firearm injury and to determine how the odds of being shot varied by neighborhood.
One limitation of the study was that they could only include kids sent to an acute care hospital following a shooting. That left out kids who died before reaching the hospital or who never sought medical care.
Findings and solutions
Researchers found that more than one in four ZIP codes — 28% — in very low-opportunity neighborhoods were “hot spots” for pediatric firearm injuries. By contrast, only 5% of ZIP codes were hot spots in very high-opportunity areas.
In Maryland, kids in very low-opportunity communities were more than 20 times likely to be hospitalized with a gunshot wound than those in the most advantaged neighborhoods. That disparity was nearly 19 times in Wisconsin, 16 in New York, and eight in Florida.
In all four states, unintentional shootings were the leading cause of pediatric shooting injuries, accounting for 57-63% of all hospitalizations. Assaults made up 32-39% of hospitalizations and self-inflicted injuries made up 1-7%.
Children in high-opportunity neighborhoods were far less likely to be injured, but more than twice as likely to die when they were shot. Researchers said that was due, in part, because self-inflicted injuries were more common in these communities.
The study’s authors urged the need for safe storage and firearm safety education. They also pointed out that health systems serving children in low-opportunity areas should anticipate and prepare for higher volumes of shooting injuries.
“Child Access Prevention laws, which require safe storage of guns, have already been shown to reduce accidental and suicide-related deaths among children,” Stey said in the statement. “Our next step is to measure how these interventions can further lower unintentional firearm injuries.”
Our other coverage of kids and firearm violence
We have often covered how kids are impacted by firearm violence. Here’s a refresher on what we’ve covered, all of which are useful for story ideas focusing on kids and firearms:
- Study detects frequent gunshots near children walking to school
- Gun violence increases physical, mental health disorders among children, survivors and families, study says
- Children in U.S. face rising risk of losing a parent to firearm violence or overdose
- Addressing childhood abuse could prevent firearm violence later in life
- Reporters uncover overlooked red flags after a Tennessee school shooting
- New resource guide equips clinicians to discuss firearm access with patients
- Black youth suicide rates continue to climb. What to know
