Forging New Frontiers 2025: Injury Prevention in Evolving Environments

Presenter Profile

Emma Sartin, PhD, MPH

Assistant Professor
Health Policy & Organization, School of Public Health
Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Heersink School of Medicine
UAB | The University of Alabama at Birmingham
esartin@uab.edu

Emma Sartin, PhD, MPH, is an Assistant Professor in the Health Policy and Organization Department in the School of Public Health and the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine, in the Heersink School of Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Broadly, her research focuses on childhood injuries, transportation, and the transition to adulthood for neurodivergent individuals.

Presentations

Updated injury trends in the Child Injury Database (CID)

Emma Sartin, PhD, MPH
Ashley Downs, MPH
William King, DrPH
Kathy Monroe, MD, MSQI
Jennifer McCain, MD

Part of session:
Lightning Round Presentations
Sunday Lightning Round
Sunday, December 7, 2025, 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM
Background:

The Children’s Injury Database (CID) is an injury surveillance system developed to collect data from injury-related visits to our tertiary care pediatric emergency department (ED). The purpose of this study was to examine updated injury trends from ED visits that occurred in 2023 and 2024 vs. those reported in 2021 (Mccain et al., 2023).

Methods:

Demographic and injury data on children 0-16 years old identified as having an injury-related ED visit in 2023 and 2024 were descriptively analyzed and compared to trends documented in 2021.

Results:

A total of 28,745 injury visits from 2023-2024 were analyzed. Demographic trends remained consistent from 2021, with 56% of the cases identified as males and 53% identified as White in 2023-2024. A total of 3,991 injury visits (13.8%) resulted in hospital admission, consistent with 2021 trends (13.5%). Compared with 2021 data, in 2023-2024 there were notably fewer cases of poisonings (13.2% vs. 8.9% of all injuries, respectively), motor vehicle crashes (7.9% vs. 4.3%), dog bites (2.0% vs. 1.6%), and assault (2.1% vs. 1.6%). Conversely, there were more cases of injuries because of ATVs (1.1% vs. 2.9%) and insect bites (<1% vs. 2.8%). Cases injuries due to falls, burns, intentional self-harm, pedestrian, and bicycle-related events were consistent. Drownings (45.2%, poisonings (41.7%), chokings (38.0%), ATVs (34.0%), and burns (33.0%) had the highest rates of admissions.

Conclusions:

There were notable differences in injury trends from 2021 to 2023-2024. This underscores the importance of injury surveillance systems, which can assist with reporting new injury patterns while also acting as a stimulus for new research ideas, planning interventions targeting the most at-risk populations, and evaluating the effectiveness of injury prevention interventions.

Objectives:

1. Injury trends in an emergency department post-COVID era.
2. Ways injury surveillance systems can assist with research and real-world practice.
3. Primary injury mechanisms across demographic factors.