• Rohan Khazanchi, Eugenia C South, Keven I Cabrera, Tyler N A Winkelman, and Aditi Vasan.
• Harvard Internal Medicine-Pediatrics Residency Program at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston Children's Hospital, and Boston Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts; FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts; Health, Homelessness, and Criminal Justice Lab, Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Electronic address: rkhazanchi@bwh.havard.edu.
• Am J Prev Med. 2024 Jun 1; 66 (6): 936947936-947.

IntroductionNeighborhood violence is an adverse childhood experience which impacts millions of U.S. children and is associated with poor health outcomes across the life course. These effects may be mitigated by access to care. Yet, the ways in which exposure to neighborhood violence shapes children's health care access have been understudied.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional analysis of 16,083 children (weighted N=67,214,201) ages 1 to <18 years from the 2019 and 2021 National Health Interview Survey. Guardians were asked about preventive care access, unmet health needs, and health care utilization in the last year. Changes associated with exposure to neighborhood violence were estimated using marginal effects from multivariable logistic regression models adjusted for year, age, sex, race/ethnicity, parental education, family structure, rurality, income, insurance type, insurance discontinuity, and overall reported health.ResultsOf 16,083 sample children, 863 (weighted 5.3% [95% CI 4.8-5.7]) reported exposure to neighborhood violence, representing a weighted population of ∼3.5 million. In adjusted analyses, exposure to violence was associated with forgone prescriptions (adjusted difference 1.2 percentage-points (pp) [95%CI 0.1-2.3]; weighted national population impact 42,833 children), trouble paying medical bills (7.7pp [4.4-11.0]; 271,735), delayed medical (1.5pp [0.2-2.9]; 54,063) and mental health care (2.8pp [1.1-4.6]; 98,627), and increased urgent care (4.5pp [0.9-8.1]; 158,246) and emergency department utilization (6.4pp [3.1-9.8]; 227,373).ConclusionsIn this nationally representative study, neighborhood violence exposure among children was associated with unmet health needs and increased acute care utilization. Evidence-based interventions to improve access to care and reduce economic precarity in communities impacted by violence are needed to mitigate downstream physical and mental health consequences.Copyright © 2024 American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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