A new study published in Cureus has analyzed pediatric emergency room visits over the past two decades. The study found that Black children are consistently more likely to need emergency department care than children from other backgrounds.
Using data from the National Health Interview Survey, the authors examined information regarding children under the age of 18 who had visited an emergency department in the United States at least once between 1997 and 2019. Across the entire study period, Black children had the highest rates of emergency department visits, starting at 24 percent in 1997, peaking at 27.9 percent in 2002, and declining to 22.9 percent by 2019.
For White children, emergency room visits declined from 19.4 percent in 1997 to 17 percent in 2019. Asian children had the lowest emergency department visit rates, at 9.4 percent in 1999 (the first year with available data for this group) and 10.2 percent in 2019. Hispanic children consistently exhibited higher rates of emergency department visits (21.1 percent in 1997 and 20.5 percent in 2019) than non-Hispanic children, but remained lower than that of Black children, as well as American Indian or Alaska Native children, whose data was available sporadically throughout the study period.
“These disparities reflect long-standing healthcare access inequalities, particularly among minority groups,” the authors write. “Black and Hispanic children are more likely to be from lower-income households, which can limit their access to primary care and lead to higher reliance on emergency services.”
They continue, “Physicians and healthcare policymakers must collaborate to develop targeted, evidence-based interventions aimed at reducing health disparities and optimizing resource allocation in emergency care for pediatric populations.”
