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.