Refugee kids in more accidents, study finds

Researchers say social and cultural differences at play

Refugee children and youth have a higher rate of getting injured in accidents than their non-refugee immigrant counterparts, a new study has found.

The added risks can be attributed to environmental, social and cultural differences, underlining the need for more targeted interventions to reduce injury risk, said the researchers with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and the Hospital for Sick Children.

“Refugees have unintentional injury rates that are 20 per cent higher than non-refugee immigrants. This has been observed across most causes of injury with particularly large differences identified for motor vehicle injuries, poisoning, suffocation, scald burns and machinery-related injuries,” said the study, published in the journal Injury Prevention on Tuesday.

“Population-based public health and safety interventions can effectively reduce these types of injury, however, we have identified a need for more targeted interventions for refugee families in Canada where social vulnerabilities and cultural differences may be contributing to injury risk.”

Based on multiple linked Canadian health databases from 2011 to 2012, researchers examined unintentional injuries of children and youth up to 24 years of age by immigration classes and region of origin.

In Ontario, there were 53,074 visits to a hospital for injuries by non-refugee children and youth immigrants, and 11,861 of such visits by their refugee counterparts.

This amounted to 6,596 and 8,122 emergency department visits per 100,000 non-refugee and refugee immigrants, respectively. The hospitalization rates per 100,000 were 144.9 for the former and185.2 for the latter.

In both groups, East and South Asians had the lowest injury rates.

Moreover, South Asian, Middle Eastern and South American non-refugee children and youth also were also less likely to get injured than those from the same region but as refugees — an indicator of how refugee status could influence injury risk within the same community.

The differences may be related to different health care-seeking behaviours among immigrants as well as what the study called “social vulnerability” such as housing safety — overcrowding, functioning smoke alarms, safe storage of toxic substances, installation of safety devices or lacking housing repairs — that make kids from low-income families more exposed to these risks.

“If parents are not storing their cleaning products in safe places, young people would have easier access to them. Sometimes the cooking environment is not safe. If you have 10 people living in an apartment, it’s easier to get burned,” said report coauthor Dr. Natasha Saunders, a pediatrician at Sick Kids Hospital.

Lower parental education, more common among refugees, and the lack of knowledge about safety devices such as child car seats or helmets all play a role in contributing to the chances of injuries among refugee children and youth, the study noted.

Researchers said the variation in injury risk among refugee children of different ethnic backgrounds may also reflect the different regulations in home country safety standards or cultural practices.