A LONGITUDINAL-STUDY OF INJURY MORBIDITY IN AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN POPULATION

Objective.-To improve understanding of the patterns of injury morbidit y and mortality in an urban African-American population. Design.-Prosp ective survey of emergency department records for a geographically def ined population from 1987 through 1990. Setting.-Eleven hospital emerg ency departments in Philadelphia, Pa. Participants.-The approximately 68 000 people living in 17 census tracts in western Philadelphia. Resu lts.-A total of 46260 injury events were identified in the survey (168 .8 events per 1000 population annually). Half of the population made a n emergency department visit for one or more injuries during the 4 yea rs of study. There were 2796 hospital admissions (10.2/1000 population ) and 403 deaths (1.5/1000 population) as a result of these injuries. Although in 1987 falls were the most frequent type of injury resulting in an emergency department visit, by 1989 the number of interpersonal intentional injury events exceeded the number of falls. Interpersonal intentional injuries accounted for 31.2% of hospital admissions and 4 2.7% of deaths. Of men 20 through 29 years old, 94.3% visited an emerg ency department at least once in the 4 years because of an injury, and 40.9% of men in this age group sought treatment for one or more inter personal intentional injuries. The likelihood of future interpersonal intentional injury-related visits increased with the number of previou s injuries of this type. Conclusions.-lnterpersonal intentional injury occurs frequently in this population. More attention needs to be paid to prevention and intervention to reduce the toll of this violence. T he high prevalence of injury in certain age strata may make general, p opulation-based efforts for injury prevention more efficient than effo rts targeted to subgroups.