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Unintentional injuries higher in areas with higher First Nations residents

By Helen Branswell The Canadian Press   

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Feb. 19, 2014 — A new study shows unintentional injury rates are higher in remote and low-income neighbourhoods with a high percentage of First Nations residents.

The study, from Statistics Canada, shows the differences were particularly acute for women aged 20 to 44.

Those living in low-income neighbourhoods with high First Nations
population were three and a half times more likely to be hospitalized
with an unintentional injury than women in low-income neighbourhoods
with fewer First Nations residents.

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Statistics Canada analyst
Evelyne Bougie says this group seems to be particularly vulnerable to
unintentional injuries, but the study wasn't designed to shed light on
why.

Unintentional injuries hospitalizations are things like
falls, motor vehicle accidents and other types of injury-inducing events
that are typically deemed to be preventable.

They do not include injuries that are the result of assaults — those are classified as intentional injuries.

"We
didn't look at the whys, and we didn't look at the particular kinds of
injuries for this particular age and sex group," Bougie says of the
young women.

The study, published Wednesday, shows the rates of
people hospitalized for unintentional injuries were between two to three
times higher in low-income areas with high First Nations populations
when compared to low-income neighbourhoods with fewer First Nations
people.

And the unintentional injury rates were about two times
higher in remote areas with high First Nations populations when compared
to remote areas with lower numbers of First Nations residents.

It
is known that in general, people who live in remote and low-income
areas are hospitalized more frequently for unintentional injuries than
people who live in more central and more affluent neighbourhoods.

But
some other factor or factors must be contributing to the higher injury
rates in remote and low-income neighbourhoods with high First Nations
populations, says Bougie, who is the study's first author.

"Other
social determinants of health could help us understand what are the
other risk factors," she says. "So it could be working conditions,
social and physical environments, health services — things like this."

"These could be areas for future research. We didn't look at them in this study."

The researchers used hospital discharge data from 2004-04 to 2009-10 and data from the 2006 census.


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