Open AccessMonitoring Sexual Violence Trends in Emergency Department Visits Using Syndromic Data From the National Syndromic Surveillance Program—United States, January 2017–December 2019
Author(s) -
Ashley S. D’Inverno,
Nimi Idaikkadar,
Debra Houry
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
american journal of public health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.284
H-Index - 264
eISSN - 1541-0048
pISSN - 0090-0036
DOI - 10.2105/ajph.2020.306034
Subject(s) - medicine , emergency department , demography , disease control , pediatrics , environmental health , sociology , psychiatry
Objectives. To report trends in sexual violence (SV) emergency department (ED) visits in the United States. Methods. We analyzed monthly changes in SV rates (per 100 000 ED visits) from January 2017 to December 2019 using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Syndromic Surveillance Program data. We stratified the data by sex and age groups. Results. There were 196 948 SV-related ED visits from January 2017 to December 2019. Females had higher rates of SV-related ED visits than males. Across the entire time period, females aged 50 to 59 years showed the highest increase (57.33%) in SV-related ED visits, when stratified by sex and age group. In all strata examined, SV-related ED visits displayed positive trends from January 2017 to December 2019; 10 out of the 24 observed positive trends were statistically significant increases. We also observed seasonal trends with spikes in SV-related ED visits during warmer months and declines during colder months, particularly in ages 0 to 9 years and 10 to 19 years. Conclusions. We identified several significant increases in SV-related ED visits from January 2017 to December 2019. Syndromic surveillance offers near-real-time surveillance of ED visits and can aid in the prevention of SV.