Examining the relationship between social deprivation index and pedestrian injuries in a suburban setting: Is that the only factor?

Abstract

Background: Increased efforts to understand the reasons for the rise in pedestrian related traffic fatalities have demonstrated that these injuries occur in minority and lower income neighborhoods. The purpose of our study was to characterize the patient population suffering from pedestrian injuries in suburban setting, to determine whether the incidence of pedestrian injuries is associated with the social deprivation index (SDI) and to identify zip codes with a higher incidence of pedestrian injuries.

Methods: Single center, descriptive, retrospective cohort study of all patients suffering from pedestrian injuries admitted to our Level I Trauma Center (01/2014-10/2022). Demographic characteristics were summarized by groups and presented using the median (IQR) or frequency (%). Spearman's rank correlation was computed to assess the relationship between incidence of pedestrian injuries and SDI. ArcGIS was utilized to map the number of pedestrians injured, SDI, and percentage of households without a vehicle by zip code.

Results: 719 patients identified had suffered pedestrian injuries. Median age of injury was 49(IQR 29-64), and median ISS was 8(IQR 4-14). There was a weak, but significant positive correlation between incidence of pedestrian injuries and SDI [r = .16; p-value = 0.02]. The zip code with the most injuries was Hempstead.

Conclusions: Hempstead has the highest number of pedestrian injuries, highest SDI and highest percentage of households without a vehicle. However, overall correlation between incidence of pedestrian injuries and SDI was weak, suggesting that SDI may not be the only factor. Future research should focus on investigating other factors such as the presence of multilane arterial roads in these areas.