Annals of emergency medicine
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Multicenter Study
Association of Gun Violence With Emergency Department Visits for Stress-Responsive Complaints.
We evaluate the association between living near a neighborhood shooting and emergency department (ED) utilization for stress-responsive complaints. ⋯ This study evaluated the relationship between objectively measured gun violence exposure and short-term health effect at a microspatial scale. Overall, this was a study with largely negative results, and we did not find any consistent dose-response pattern in time or space regarding neighborhood shootings and stress-responsive presentations to the ED. Theoretic links make this relationship plausible, however, and further investigation is needed to understand the short-term health consequences of violence exposure, and whether those vary based on the circumstances that are experienced inherently by residents of a given neighborhood.