Pediatric emergency department visits due to child abuse and neglect following COVID-19 public health emergency declaration in the Southeastern United States

Table 1 Effect of Georgia’s Emergency Declaration on CAN Visits to Children’s EDs

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)
	Mean Weeks 1–10	Mean Weeks 11–26	Difference (Column 1 - Column 2)	Adjusted Difference (Row 1-Row 2 + Year, Week, & Day-of-Week Dummy Variables)
Panel A: Number of Children Visiting Children’s Facilities with Suspected CAN
2020	7.03	5.94	-1.09***
2018–2019	6.20	6.46	0.26
Difference (Column 4)				-0.21***
				(0.07)
Panel B: Number of Children Visiting Children’s Facilities due to Neglect from Lack of Supervision
2020	0.62	1.24	0.62***
2018–2019	0.68	0.73	0.05
Difference (Column 4)				0.62***
				(0.19)
Panel C: CAN ED Visits Relative to All ED Visits
2020	10.21	20.43	10.23***
2018–2019	8.75	10.53	1.78***
Difference (Column 4)				8.47***
				(1.01)
Panel D: Neglect from Lack of Supervision ED Visits Relative to All ED Visits
2020	0.87	4.28	3.40***
2018–2019	0.97	1.19	0.21
Difference (Column 4)				3.17***
				(0.35)
Panel E: Neglect from Lack of Supervision ED Visits Relative to CAN ED visits
2020	0.10	0.22	0.12***
2018–2019	0.11	0.12	0.01
Difference (Column 4)				0.11***
				(0.03)

Source: Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta data weeks 1–26 of 2018, 2019, and 2020. Notes: The unit of analysis is date. N = 181 days in each of 3 years = 543 for each cell. The outcomes are: the number of children visiting Children’s facilities’ EDs with confirmed child abuse or neglect (Panels A-C), the rate of child abuse and neglect visits relative to all ED visits, per 1,000 visits (Panels D-F), and the percent of all CAN ED visits due to specific maltreatment types or child characteristics (Panels G-H). Adjusted regressions include week, year, and day of the week fixed effects. Panels A-B estimated as a Poisson model. Panels C-E are estimated as OLS. Robust standard errors are in parentheses
*p < 0.10, **p < 0.05, ***p < 0.01

ISSN: 1471-2431