Neighborhood, Family, and Child Predictors of Childhood Injury in Canada

OBJECTIVE: To examine independent and combined effects of child, family and neighborhood on medically attended childhood injuries. METHODS: Logistic modeling of longitudinal data (n=9796) from the Census Linked National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. RESULTS: Child age and gender were strong predictors of injuries. Smaller effects were found for parenting, neighborhood cohesion among difficult children less than 2 years old, and neighborhood disadvantage among aggressive children 2-3 years old. CONCLUSION: Neighborhood in addition to parenting can affect injury risk. Further research is needed into the influence of neighborhood disadvantage and the processes of neighbor's cohesion at different childhood stages.