Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #121262

Elspeth M. Slayter, MSW, MA¹, Deborah W. Garnick, ScD², Joanna M. Kubisiak, MPH³, Christine E. Bishop, PhD², Daniel M. Gilden, MS³, and Rosemarie B. Hakim, PhD⁴. (1) The Nathan and Toby Starr Center for Mental Retardation, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, MS 035, Waltham, MA 02454-9110, 617-628-8509, eslayter@brandeis.edu, (2) Schneider Institute for Health Policy, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, 415 South Street, Mailstop 035, Waltham, MA 02454, (3) JEN Associates Inc., 5 Bigelow Street, Cambridge, MA 02139, (4) Office of Strategic Planning, Research & Evaluation Group, Div. of Beneficiary Research, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 7500 Security Blvd., Mail Stop: C3-19-07, Baltimore, MD 21244-1850

Childhood injuries can lead to increased morbidity and result in significant costs to public insurance programs. Medicaid is a major source of health insurance coverage for youth with mental retardation and is estimated to pay almost a third of injury care costs nationwide. For youth with mental retardation, injuries can have implications for community inclusion, a central policy goal for this population. Medicaid eligibility and claims data on services received in inpatient, outpatient and long-term care settings represent an important new resource for injury surveillance among youth with mental retardation. Injury prevalence for 8.4 million Medicaid-eligible children in 26 states was measured. In total, 36.9 percent (N=18,344) Medicaid beneficiaries aged 1-20 with mental retardation had at least one injury claim as compared with 23.5 percent (N=1,978,501) of those without mental retardation. Overall, males were more likely than females to experience injury in this population, a finding that differed from previous research results. Controlling for age and gender, youth with mental retardation were more likely to be treated for any injury, and were much more likely than the comparison group to be treated for poisoning, foreign body injuries, dislocations and internal injuries. Prevalence rates with confidence intervals are reported by gender and age for a variety of injury types for youth with and without mental retardation. These data will allow for better planning and targeting of quality of life and cost-saving prevention interventions through a focus on the specific injury types for which youth with mental retardation are at greatest risk.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize types of injury for which youth with MR are at increased risk
• Apply information about increased injury risk among segments of this population to day-to-day injury prevention intervention planning
• Describe a new process for conducting injury surveillance among youth with MR through the use of Medicaid eligibility and claims data

Keywords: Injury Risk, Disability

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.

Recorded presentation