Child”s ZIP Code Tied to Odds of Being Injured, Killed by a Firearm

TUESDAY, Sept. 2, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Where a child lives is tied to a their odds of being injured or killed by a firearm, according to a study published online Aug. 25 in Pediatrics.

Gwyneth A. Sullivan, M.D., from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues examined the relationship between home ZIP code Childhood Opportunity Index (COI) and ZIP code incidence of pediatric firearm-related injury hospital encounters in four geographically representative states. The analysis included discharge data (2016 to 2021) from 6,896 pediatric firearm-related injury hospital encounters in Florida, Maryland, New York, and Wisconsin.

The researchers found a larger proportion of hot spots among very low compared with very high COI ZIP codes (28.4 versus 5.5 percent). In all four states, the ZIP code incidence rate ratio of pediatric firearm-related injury hospital encounters incrementally decreased with each rising quintile of ZIP code COI. For both very low COI ZIP codes (56.8 percent) and very high COI ZIP codes (56.1 percent), unintentional injury accounted for the largest proportion of firearm-related injury.

“The fewer opportunities a child has in their neighborhood, the greater their odds of ending up in the hospital with a firearm injury,” coauthor Mehul Raval, M.D., also from Northwestern University, said in a statement.

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