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- Written by: Suzanne Leigh
In the study, led by UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals and Children’s Mercy Kansas City, researchers tracked the number of pediatric inpatients ages 5 and under in 52 children’s hospitals nationwide for the first eight months of 2020.
They found a steep decline in the number of ER visits and hospital admissions, including those requiring treatment for physical abuse.
This started in mid-March around the time some states issued shelter-in-place orders – according to the study, which publishes March 1, 2021, in Pediatrics.
When the researchers looked at the proportion of patients whose abuse had resulted in admission to the ICU and other markers of severe injury, in the period from March 16 to Aug. 31, they found little difference between the same period for prior years.
“If the proportion of children diagnosed with more severe abusive injuries had increased during the pandemic, this would indicate that declines in physical abuse were driven by children with less severe abusive injuries not presenting for medical care or being missed by clinicians,” said first author Sunitha Kaiser, MD, a pediatric hospitalist at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals and associate professor in the UCSF departments of pediatrics, and epidemiology and biostatistics.
“Instead, we found the severity of injuries was similar to pre-pandemic levels, which suggests that physical abuse may have decreased similarly across the full spectrum of severity,” she said.
The researchers found that there was a lower percentage of physically abused infants needing ICU care during the pandemic period compared to the same timeframe in previous years: 15.4 percent versus 21.3 percent. The study found little difference between those timeframes in the proportion of abused children who had died in the hospital (about 2 percent), and the proportion of abused children admitted for abusive head trauma.
CARES, eviction protections may have prevented child abuse
While further studies may reveal different patterns, including the possibility that evidence of abuse may not be apparent for months to follow, Kaiser suggests that interventions such as financial stipends from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act and eviction protections may have alleviated adult stress, preventing spikes in violence toward children.
“Our take-home message is that policies that help reduce stress on families should continue to be prioritized to prevent unnecessary harms to children. Clinicians, teachers and caretakers should also continue to be very vigilant in suspecting and reporting potential abuse, because we know it is historically under-detected and under-reported.”
Other explanations for the study’s findings include failure by clinicians to identify abuse, a scenario that Kaiser says is less likely, because patient volumes had dropped during the pandemic enabling doctors to potentially dedicate more time to patients presenting with injuries of questionable causes.
A 2016 paper cited in the study found that the rate of abusive head trauma in children under 5 increased from 9.8 per 100,000 child years before 2007, to 15.6 per 100,000 child years during the recession of 2007 to 2009.
Co-Authors: Senior author is Henry T. Puls, MD, of Children’s Mercy Kansas City. A full list of co-authors is available online.
Funding: COVID-19 Rapid Response Funding Collaborative.
Suzanne Leigh writes for the University of California, San Francisco.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The following cats at the shelter have been cleared for adoption.
Call Lake County Animal Care and Control at 707-263-0278 or visit the shelter online at http://www.co.lake.ca.us/Government/Directory/Animal_Care_And_Control.htm for information on visiting or adopting.
Female domestic long hair
This young female domestic long hair cat has a gray and white coat and gold eyes.
She is in cat room kennel No. 11, ID No. 14320.
Male tuxedo cat
This male tuxedo cat has a short black and white coat and green eyes.
He is in cat room kennel No. 39, ID No. 14359.
‘Buddy’
“Buddy” is a male domestic short hair cat with a flame point and white coat and blue eyes.
He has been neutered.
He’s in cat room kennel No. 100, ID No. 14384.
‘Fifty-Fifty’
“Fifty-Fifty” is a male orange tabby with a short coat.
He has been neutered.
He is in cat room kennel No. 123, ID No. 14401.
‘Boots’
“Boots” is a male domestic short hair cat with a black and white coat and green eyes.
He has been neutered.
He is in cat room kennel No. 135, ID No. 14400.
Male domestic short hair cat
This male domestic short hair cat has a black and white coat and green eyes.
He has been neutered.
He’s in cat room kennel No. 142, ID No. 14386.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
The crash occurred on Highway 29 near the entrance to the Bar X Ranch north of Middletown shortly after 11 p.m. Saturday, according to the California Highway Patrol and radio reports.
The wreck involved what the CHP described as a white van and a black pickup truck.
Authorities arriving at the scene found the highway completely blocked, with major injuries to two people who were trapped in one of the vehicles.
An air ambulance was requested to land at the Middletown Fire Station, with the CHP’s H-32 helicopter responding from Napa County. Oher air ambulances said they couldn’t take the flight due to weather, based on radio reports.
Just after 11:30 p.m., one of the trapped patients was reported to have died and the Lake County Sheriff’s Office was requested to send a coroner.
As firefighters continued to extricate the second patient, incident command asked Cal Fire Dispatch to notify Caltrans about the need for an extended closure of the highway.
The CHP helicopter had already landed at the fire station when, just before 12:10 a.m. Sunday, firefighters finished extricating the second patient and incident command confirmed the second death over the radio.
Incident command reported just before 1 a.m. that Caltrans would need light towers and heavy debris removal equipment to clear the highway.
At that point, incident command said work was expected to continue at the crash scene for several hours.
More information will be published as it becomes available.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Devon Brenner, Mississippi State University and Jesse Longhurst, Southern Oregon University
About 46 million Americans – 14% of the nation’s inhabitants – are currently classified as living in rural areas. That number could jump to 64 million – an increase of nearly 40% – without anyone moving into a new home. That could actually hurt small cities and rural communities across the country.
The federal government classifies communities’ characteristics based on their populations, according to a definition created by the federal Office of Management and Budget. The criteria haven’t substantially changed since the 1940s. Since then, the U.S. population has more than doubled, from 152 million in 1950 to more than 328 million in 2019.
The main dividing line is between communities – which include both towns and cities and their surrounding counties – with more than 50,000 people and those with fewer than that number. Over the past 70 years, the number of areas with at least that many people has increased from 168 to 384 as small towns have grown into small cities. For example, from 1950 to 2010, the population of Lawrence, Kansas, grew from 23,351 to 87,643.
Under the current definition, Colbert County, Alabama – population 54,428 – is in the same category as Los Angeles County – population over 10 million. As the Trump administration ended, federal officials decided some more nuance would be useful in understanding American communities. They proposed to change the dividing line to populations of more than 100,000 – and the effort appears to be continuing under the Biden administration.
That change would effectively move everyone who lives in places with 50,000 to 100,000 from urban to rural life, because their cities, including San Luis Obispo, California, and Battle Creek, Michigan, will no longer be considered large enough to count as metropolitan.
Redefining rural
The government doesn’t specifically use this system to label places as “urban” or “rural.” Instead, there are three government categories – “metropolitan,” “micropolitan” and “outside a core based statistical area.” However, most government agencies, researchers, advocates and media outlets use these classifications to sort communities into two groups – equating “metropolitan” with “urban” and the other two categories together as “rural.”
Making the proposed change would mean 144 areas with populations between 50,000 and 100,000, and the 251 counties they occupy, would no longer be classified as “metropolitan,” but rather as “micropolitan” – and therefore effectively rural – including Flagstaff, Arizona, and Blacksburg, Virginia. The change would leave Wyoming without any metropolitan areas at all.
The Office of Management and Budget is accepting comments about this proposed change until March 19.
Looking at the numbers
Changing how rural areas are defined could change Americans’ understanding of rural life.
For instance, the current data reveal that rural areas have less access to broadband internet and health care services.
But if the homes and communities of 18 million more Americans are added to those rural statistics, the numbers could look better. That rosier picture – which would not be the result of any actual changes to Americans’ lives – could reduce public and political pressure to improve life in rural communities.
It’s also not clear whether 100,000 is the right boundary for urban living – or of there is an exact number at all. To people in major cities, a community of 80,000 like Santa Fe, New Mexico, may be more similar to the 22,000-person Roseburg, Oregon, than to Chicago or Miami. To a rancher on the Plains, with fewer than one person per square mile, though, Santa Fe may qualify as a “big city,” with chain stores, hospitals and government offices.
More than a statistical shift
Though the government’s proposal says it’s meant as a statistical change only, the classifications are commonly used by government agencies, charities and other organizations to determine which communities are eligible for their funding or programs.
The change could make many small American cities, which would be newly identified as rural, ineligible for money to help community planning and public transit – even if they currently get that money.
Communities currently designated as rural may be hurt, too. If Congress and states don’t allocate more funds to serve the increased number of people classified as living in rural areas, the money that is available – like rural health grants – would be spread more thinly.
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Devon Brenner, Assistant VP for Outreach and Initiatives, Office of Research and Economic Development, and Professor, College of Education, Mississippi State University and Jesse Longhurst, Assistant Professor of Education, Southern Oregon University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.