Abstract

Objective: To identify risk factors for non-fatal injury among rural children.

Design: Cross sectional health interview survey, 1994–98.

Setting: A rural Iowa county, not adjacent to a metropolitan area.

Subjects: Stratified, random sample of households, including all resident children and adults.

Main outcome measures: Injury episodes in the past 12 months among children aged 0–17 years and the parental and child characteristics associated with these episodes.

Results: Of the 621 children in participating households, 137 or 22.1% were injured during the past 12 months. Children age 5–17 on a sports team were 1.88 times (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.07 to 3.31) more likely than other children to be injured. Children age 12–17 who binge drink were 3.50 times (95% CI 1.31 to 9.50) more likely than other children to be injured. Compared with children not on sports teams, girls on teams were 2.26 times (95% CI 1.02 to 5.13) more likely while boys on teams were 1.60 times (95% CI 0.71 to 3.68) more likely to have an injury episode. Compared with children who did not binge drink, girls binge drinking were 8.11 times (95% CI 1.52 to 43.33) more likely while boys binge drinking were 2.19 times (95% CI 0.70 to 6.84) more likely to have an injury episode.

Conclusions: Local studies such as this can provide useful clues regarding the etiology of injury. Some known and some new potential risk factors including behavioral aspects for childhood non-fatal injury in a very rural area were investigated. It is planned to address these cross sectional findings in future longitudinal follow up of this population.