By Jeff Black, Staff Writer, NBC News
It turns out the streets of the city aren’t so mean after all — especially when compared with country life.
A
new study by University of Pennsylvania researchers upends the commonly
held perception that rural small towns are safer than big cities.
"Contrary
to popular belief, cities do happen to be the safest place you can
live," lead study author Dr. Sage Myers, a pediatrician and researcher
at Penn, told NBC News.
The study shows the risk of death from an
injury— including shootings, vehicle accidents, drownings, falls and
many other accidents — is more than 20 percent higher in rural small
towns than larger cities.
"Cars, guns and drugs are the unholy trinity causing the majority of injury deaths in the U.S.," Myers said.
The risk of homicide is what most people think of when they look at
how safe big cities are, she said. But, although homicide rates are
indeed higher in big cities, the risk of unintentional injury-related
deaths is a full 40 percent higher in rural areas than in urban areas.
And the overall number of deaths from homicides is dwarfed by deaths from unintentional injuries.
Using
a federal database built using death certificate information from
across the country, the study analyzed nearly 1.3 million deaths from
injuries between 1999 and 2006. It excluded terrorism-related deaths.
The
three-year study found the potential of such deaths is 22 percent
higher in the most rural counties compared with urban counties.
The
most common causes of injury-related deaths: motor vehicle crashes. In
most rural areas there were 27.61 vehicle-related deaths per 100,000
people, compared with 10.58 deaths per 100,000 people in most urban
areas, according to the study.
Overall, the risk of death from a
firearm was no different in a rural vs. an urban settings. Yet, for some
groups of people, particularly children and people older than 45,
firearm deaths were higher in rural areas.
For people age 20-44, the risk of firearm deaths was greater in big cities.
The
study will be published online in the Annals of Emergency Medicine on
Tuesday. The findings have implications for how emergency departments
are staffed in rural areas, which tend to be underserved, according to
the study's authors.
Though the study seems to go against
conventional wisdom, the disparity in injury-related deaths isn't a
surprise to the emergency medical community, Dr. Howard Mell, a
spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians, told NBC
News.
"At the end of the day, it's about access to care and how
far you are from a trauma center," Mell said. "How fast you can get to
center with trained physicians and oftentimes into the operating room."
Many rural areas, he noted, simply do not have the level of emergency medical care that can be found in major American cities.
No comments:
Post a Comment