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SALT LAKE CITY -- A new report from the Utah Department of Health breaks down violence and injuries by neighborhood statewide. While you'd expect some of the findings, there are quite a few surprises.
For example, you can count yourself pretty safe in Davis County, where injuries from assaults, traffic deaths, poisonings, suicides and accidental injuries are all below the state average. But if you live around Clearfield and Hill Air Force Base, you're more likely to need emergency care after a car accident.
Jenny Johnson, spokeswoman for the health department's Violence and Injury Prevention Program, says that's even though seat belt use for those areas is near 97 percent, even above the state average of 90 percent.
Injury in Utah
• 1,400 Utahns die as a result of an injury
• 10,900 Utahns are hospitalized for serious injuries
• 176,600 Utahns are treated in emergency rooms because of injuries.
And while more affluent neighborhoods tended to be below the state average in most categories, that wasn't always the case.
For example, the Avenues in Salt Lake City had lower-than-state average rates of accidental injury, poisoning, suicide, emergency room visits because of falls and car accidents. But the neighborhood was above average when it came to injuries caused by assault.
That's not to say the Avenues are a hotbed of assault reports. The rate there, at 24.6 cases for every 10,000 people, is much lower than the neighborhood in the state with the highest age-adjusted rate of emergency department visits as a result of injury caused by assault. That honor goes to Glendale, with 56.6 injuries for every 10,000 people.
Summit County as a whole had the least reported emergency room visits as the result of assault-related injury, at just over seven injuries for every 10,000 people.
Johnson says what happens next is up to each area of the state. Local health department districts will have the chance to go over the data and determine what they're doing right and what they can improve on in terms of prevention, whether it's talking about domestic violence or seat belt use or even accidental falls.
"Because now we have this data by small area, we're able to then go into these areas and really look to see why things are happening," she says.
Johnson says the goal will be to periodically re-evaluate the data, if not annually then maybe every few years, to see if what they're doing is working.
You'll find the entire report in PDF form, HERE.
E-mail: bbruce@ksl.com
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