Beth E. Ebel

Alcohol Interventions for Trauma Patients Treated in Emergency Departments and Hospitals: A Cost Benefit Analysis

Objective:To determine if brief alcohol interventions in trauma centers reduce health care costs. Summary Background Data:Alcohol-use disorders are the leading cause of injury. Brief interventions in trauma patients reduce subsequent alcohol intake and injury recidivism but have not yet been widely implemented. Methods:This was a cost-benefit analysis. The study population consisted of injured patients treated in an emergency department or admitted to a hospital. The analysis was restricted to direct injury-related medical costs only so that it would be most meaningful to hospitals, insurers, and government agencies responsible for health care costs. Underlying assumptions used to arrive at future benefits, including costs, injury rates, and intervention effectiveness, were derived from published nationwide databases, epidemiologic, and clinical trial data. Model parameters were examined with 1-way sensitivity analyses, and the cost-benefit ratio was calculated. Monte Carlo analysis was used to determine the strategy-selection confidence intervals. Results:An estimated 27% of all injured adult patients are candidates for a brief alcohol intervention. The net cost savings of the intervention was

Continuity of binge and harmful drinking from late adolescence to early adulthood.

89 per patient screened, or

Policy Statement—Child Passenger Safety

330 for each patient offered an intervention. The benefit in reduced health expenditures resulted in savings of

Firearm-Related Injuries Affecting the Pediatric Population

3.81 for every

Smoking Cessation Interventions for Adolescents A Systematic Review

1.00 spent on screening and intervention. This finding was robust to various assumptions regarding probability of accepting an intervention, cost of screening and intervention, and risk of injury recidivism. Monte Carlo simulations found that offering a brief intervention would save health care costs in 91.5% of simulated runs. If interventions were routinely offered to eligible injured adult patients nationwide, the potential net savings could approach

Impact of social and technological distraction on pedestrian crossing behaviour: an observational study

1.82 billion annually. Conclusions:Screening and brief intervention for alcohol problems in trauma patients is cost-effective and should be routinely implemented.

BOOSTER SEATS FOR CHILD PASSENGERS: LESSONS FOR INCREASING THEIR USE

Objective. To test the hypothesis that late adolescent drinking behavior (ages 17–20) is associated with harmful and binge drinking in early adulthood (ages 30–31). Methods. We used the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), a nationally representative longitudinal data set. We used harmful and binge drinking at ages 17 to 20 to predict harmful and binge drinking at ages 30 to 31, stratifying for gender and controlling for confounders. Results. Data were available on harmful drinking at both the adolescent and the early adult age period for 3790 individuals and on binge drinking for 2387 individuals. Harmful drinking during adolescence was significantly associated with harmful drinking at ages 30 to 31 for men only. Among male adolescents, 14% of harmful drinkers continued harmful drinking at ages 30 to 31, compared with 4% of nonharmful drinkers who became harmful drinkers. In Poisson regression models, binge drinking during adolescence was associated with binge drinking at ages 30 to 31 for both men and women, generating relative risks of 2.3 (95% confidence interval: 1.8–3.0) and 3.0 (95% confidence interval: 2.4–4.8), respectively. Half of binge-drinking male adolescents and one third of binge-drinking female adolescents engaged in binge drinking into early adulthood, compared with 19% for non–binge-drinking male adolescents and 8% of non–binge-drinking female adolescents. Conclusions. Problem drinking during adolescence is associated with problem drinking in early adulthood. Efforts to prevent and treat adolescent problem drinking could have an impact on the progression of alcohol-related disease.

Long-term outcomes of ground-level falls in the elderly.

Child passenger safety has dramatically evolved over the past decade; however, motor vehicle crashes continue to be the leading cause of death of children 4 years and older. This policy statement provides 4 evidence-based recommendations for best practices in the choice of a child restraint system to optimize safety in passenger vehicles for children from birth through adolescence: (1) rear-facing car safety seats for most infants up to 2 years of age; (2) forward-facing car safety seats for most children through 4 years of age; (3) belt-positioning booster seats for most children through 8 years of age; and (4) lap-and-shoulder seat belts for all who have outgrown booster seats. In addition, a fifth evidence-based recommendation is for all children younger than 13 years to ride in the rear seats of vehicles. It is important to note that every transition is associated with some decrease in protection; therefore, parents should be encouraged to delay these transitions for as long as possible. These recommendations are presented in the form of an algorithm that is intended to facilitate implementation of the recommendations by pediatricians to their patients and families and should cover most situations that pediatricians will encounter in practice. The American Academy of Pediatrics urges all pediatricians to know and promote these recommendations as part of child passenger safety anticipatory guidance at every health-supervision visit.

Policy Statement—Prevention of Drowning

The absence of guns from children’s homes and communities is the most reliable and effective measure to prevent firearm-related injuries in children and adolescents. Adolescent suicide risk is strongly associated with firearm availability. Safe gun storage (guns unloaded and locked, ammunition locked separately) reduces children’s risk of injury. Physician counseling of parents about firearm safety appears to be effective, but firearm safety education programs directed at children are ineffective. The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to support a number of specific measures to reduce the destructive effects of guns in the lives of children and adolescents, including the regulation of the manufacture, sale, purchase, ownership, and use of firearms; a ban on semiautomatic assault weapons; and the strongest possible regulations of handguns for civilian use.

Improving Pediatric Prevention via the Internet: A Randomized, Controlled Trial

OBJECTIVE To conduct a systematic review of controlled trials for adolescent smoking cessation. METHODS Online bibliographic databases were searched as of June 2002, and reference lists from review articles and the selected articles were also reviewed for potential studies. The methodology and findings of all retrieved articles were critically evaluated. Data were extracted from each article regarding study methods, intervention studied, outcomes measured, and results. RESULTS The abstracts or full-text articles of 281 relevant studies were examined, of which six met the selection criteria. Included were three school-based studies, a study in pregnant adolescent girls, a hospital-based study, and a trial of laser acupuncture. All three of the school-based studies reported significant impacts on cessation rates, although only one of these was a randomized trial. None of the studies had follow-up times of >5.2 months. CONCLUSIONS There is very limited evidence demonstrating efficacy of smoking-cessation interventions in adolescents, and no evidence on the long-term effectiveness of such interventions. Smoking-cessation interventions that have proven most effective in adults, such as nicotine replacement and antidepressant use, have not been studied in adolescents in a controlled manner.