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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Douglas Wiebe, PhD, Violence Prevention Research Group, UCLA School of Public Health, 650 C.E. Young Drive South, Box 951772, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1772, 310-794-7690, wiebe@ucla.edu
Introduction: In the United States between 1989 and 1998, 13,000 people died from an unintentional gunshot injury. The purpose of this study is to estimate the relative risk of dying from an unintentional gunshot injury associated with having a firearm in the home.
Methods: Unintentional gunshot fatality cases age 15 and older were drawn from the 1993 National Mortality Followback Survey. Controls were drawn from the 1994 National Health Interview Survey and matched to the cases by sex, age group and race. Subjects were classified as exposed or unexposed based on an interview response indicating whether a firearm was present in the subject's home. The relative risk for unintentional gunshot fatality was estimated with control for several covariates.
Results: The adjusted relative risk for dying from an unintentional gunshot injury in the home was, on average, 5 times higher among persons who lived in a home where a gun was present compared to those living in a home where no guns were present. Ongoing analyses are estimating the relative risk of dying outside the home.
Conclusion: The preliminary results from this case-control study are consistent with ecological research, which suggests that access to firearms poses a risk for adults to die from an unintentional gunshot injury.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion the participant will have learned about
Keywords: Firearms, Injury
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.