University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Social Work, Chapel Hill, NC.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Gillings School of Public Health, Chapel Hill, NC.
J Pediatr. 2023 Nov;262:113582. doi: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2023.113582. Epub 2023 Jun 22.
To assess the counts of infant maltreatment-related medical encounters at a large medical system during a 21-month span of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Retrospective data for this study came from all inpatient and emergency department medical encounters for infants from January 1, 2016, through November 30, 2021, at a single children's hospital system in California. Distributions of medical encounters were tabulated and plotted over time. Interrupted time series models were used to evaluate changes in child maltreatment medical encounters.
Medical encounters for infants with child maltreatment diagnoses increased following the onset of COVID-19. Monthly counts of encounters with indicated maltreatment trended upward following the start of the pandemic. Interrupted time series models showed that the count of maltreatment encounters increased 64% with the onset of COVID-19.
We found an increase in infant maltreatment medical encounters during a 21-month period following the onset of COVID-19. These findings suggest that the pandemic may have adversely affected the safety of infants and ongoing work is needed to understand better the pandemic impacts on child maltreatment.
评估在 COVID-19 大流行期间，一个大型医疗系统在 21 个月内与婴儿虐待相关的医疗就诊次数。
本研究的回顾性数据来自加利福尼亚州一家儿童医院系统 2016 年 1 月 1 日至 2021 年 11 月 30 日期间所有婴儿的住院和急诊医疗就诊记录。对医疗就诊记录的分布情况进行了列表分析，并随时间绘制图表。采用中断时间序列模型来评估儿童虐待医疗就诊次数的变化情况。
COVID-19 出现后，与儿童虐待诊断相关的婴儿医疗就诊次数增加。大流行开始后，有指示性虐待的就诊次数逐月呈上升趋势。中断时间序列模型显示，COVID-19 出现后，虐待就诊次数增加了 64%。
我们发现 COVID-19 出现后 21 个月内，婴儿虐待医疗就诊次数增加。这些发现表明，大流行可能对婴儿的安全造成了不利影响，需要进一步开展工作，以更好地了解大流行对儿童虐待的影响。
