"Kids 'n' Cars", an Ongoing Study of Pedestrian Injuries: Description and Early Findings

Abstract

"Kids 'N' Cars" is a 5 year matched case control study of pedestrian injury (PI) affecting school-aged children in Chicago. The study's goals are (1) to characterize the victims and injury sites and their interactions, (2) to identify biopsychosocial risk factors for PI in victims as compared to controls (matched on age, race, sex, parental education, and area of residence), and (3) to identify factors contributing to the causal sequence that leads to PI events. This paper reviews the literature on the subject, describes the study, and presents our early results. Innovative methods for analyzing the causal sequence are described, which may be useful in the study of other types of injuries as well as PI.