Correlates of emergency room visits by under-3-year-old children in United States

Purpose To describe gender, race, age of children and their motherʹs education, employment and depressed status associated with <3-year-old childrenʹs ER visits in the past 12 months, and its prevalence in the USA. Methods Using data from National Survey of Early Childhood Health, 2000 (NSECH), we identified all the children who had one or more ER visits in the past twelve months. A multistage national random-digit-dialed sample of households was used to obtain representative sample of children under 36 months. A design-based analysis with STATA 8 was done using logistic regression, odds ratios (OR) were computed for the association of ER visits with various variables. Results The overall prevalence of one or more ER visits in the past 12 months was 36.4% and 95% Confidence Interval (CI) was 33.5 – 39.3% (n = 2068). In females prevalence was 33.9% (95% CI 29.8 – 38.1), while in males prevalence was 38.8% (95% CI 34.7 – 42.8). No statistically significant association was observed between childrenʹs gender or age and ER visits. While compared to Whites, African-American children were more likely to have visited ER in the past 12 months OR 1.7 (95% CI 1.27 – 2.26). Educational attainment of mothers was assessed in terms of less than high school, high school, or more than high school. Compared to mothers with less than high school education, children of mothers with more than high school education were less likely to have visited ER in the past 12 months (OR 0.6, 95% CI 0.41 – 0.84). While mothers employment status was not found to be statistically significant to ER visits. Compared to mothers who reported feeling “downhearted/blue” as either little or none of the time during the last month, children of mothers who reported feeling this way as either some or all of the time were more likely to have visited ER in the past 12 months (OR 1.4, 95% CI 1.05 – 1.9). Conclusion African-American mothers with less than high school education and who were feeling downhearted or blue in the past thirty days were more likely to have had their under-3-year-old child visit Emergency Room one or more times during the past twelve months.