UC Irvine researchers present latest findings at emergency medi...( The UC Irvine Department of Emergenc...),Health

The UC Irvine Department of Emergency Medicine is hosting the 11th annual Society of Academic Emergency Medicine Research Forum March 28-29 in Costa Mesa, Calif. As part of the forum, UC Irvine emergency medical physicians will present research findings on a variety of related areas ranging from the continued decline of on-call emergency department services to the success of computerized alcohol-use counseling.

Emergency department on-call coverage continues to worsen in California

DR. SCOTT E. RUDKIN and his UC Irvine colleagues have found emergency medical services in California continue to erode. In surveying emergency medicine physicians in 2000 and again in 2006, they found that California emergency departments reported significant trouble with timely response for on-call services specialties such as plastic surgery, neurosurgery and ophthalmology. Of 21 on-call specialties, response worsened for nine and improved for only one, leading the researchers to conclude that the on-call situation in California has worsened considerably in six years.

Child-pedestrian collisions more frequent in poorer neighborhoods

DR. BHARATH CHAKRAVARTHY and his colleagues with the UC Irvine Center for Trauma and Injury Prevention Research examined police-reported child-pedestrian collision rates in economically and culturally diverse Orange County, Calif., and found that collisions happen nine times more frequently in low-income neighborhoods. Along with income levels, variables that related to these collisions included population density, household size, high-school graduation rates among adults and English-language skills. The implications of this study are that risk factors for child-pedestrian collisions are many, but the most important risk factor appears to be poverty. Further research should be targeted at mitigating the detrimental effects that poverty has on injury disparities.