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Check out our new study in @JAMASurgery: "Association of a New Trauma Center With Racial, Ethnic, and Socioeconomic Disparities in Access
to Trauma Care" @uchicagosurgery
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/10.1001/jamasurg.2020.4998?guestAccessKey=573967b2-08e4-43ca-b5b9-23cf24c278f5&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=112520
to Trauma Care" @uchicagosurgery
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/fullarticle/10.1001/jamasurg.2020.4998?guestAccessKey=573967b2-08e4-43ca-b5b9-23cf24c278f5&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=112520
We had a great team working on this! This is a study w/ coauthors Jay Dumanian, Samuel Okum, @Dar_Nwaudo, Daniel Lee, Priya Prakash, and Peter Bendix. It tells the story of what happened after @UChicago opened a Level 1 Trauma Center.
Many on the South Side of Chicago had rightly protested the lack of trauma care in an area that suffers a high incidence of violent injury and is disproportionately Black/African American: https://www.npr.org/2018/04/28/606716569/chicagos-new-trauma-center
Protests were sparked after 18-year-old Damian Turner was shot only a few blocks away the University of Chicago hospital. As there was not trauma center at the time, he was transported nine miles to Northwestern University where he died from his injuries.
Due to the efforts of activists, @UChicago finally opened their Adult Trauma Center in April 2018.
So, on average what was happening before there was a trauma center on the South Side of Chicago? And, what happened after?
So, on average what was happening before there was a trauma center on the South Side of Chicago? And, what happened after?
Simply: before @UChicago opened its Trauma Center, Black/African American patients took almost 30% longer to arrive at a trauma center in Chicago. After UChicago opened a Level 1 Trauma Center on the South Side, this disparity in transport times was wiped out.
Black/African American patients from low-income zip codes had the longest overall transport times. In other words: ๐๐๐๐ + ๐๐จ๐ฏ๐๐ซ๐ญ๐ฒ ๐ข๐ง๐ญ๐๐ซ๐ฌ๐๐๐ญ๐๐ ๐ญ๐จ ๐๐จ๐ฆ๐ฉ๐จ๐ฎ๐ง๐ ๐ ๐๐ข๐ฌ๐ฉ๐๐ซ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ that has potentially life & death consequences.
From our paper: "The largest decrease of 8.9 minutes (P < .001) occurred in zip code 60649, a neighborhood where 94% of residents are Black, and the median household income is approximately $30 000.5"
These disparities are the byproducts of systemic racism and residential segregation. Low-income communities of color are often put out of mind and (literally due to residential segregation) put out of sight.
@selwyn_rogers and team found in a prior paper that in Chicago, a 5-minute increase in transport time was associated with a 0.5% decrease in survival among trauma patients in a recent study: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30086071/
Therefore, we believe the opening of the Adult Trauma Center @UChicago may improve outcomes among patients on the far south side of Chicago, although further research is needed to explore the effects of the center on mortality
#trauma #surgery #chicago #residential #segregation
#trauma #surgery #chicago #residential #segregation
