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Spending on social and public health services and its association with homicide in the USA: an ecological study
OBJECTIVE: To examine whether state-level spending on social and public health services is associated with lower rates of homicide in the USA. DESIGN: Ecological study. SETTING: USA. PARTICIPANTS: All states in the USA and the District of Columbia for which data were available (n=42). PRIMARY OUTCOM...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BMJ Publishing Group
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5652551/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29025831 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016379 |
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author | Sipsma, Heather L Canavan, Maureen E Rogan, Erika Taylor, Lauren A Talbert-Slagle, Kristina M Bradley, Elizabeth H |
author_facet | Sipsma, Heather L Canavan, Maureen E Rogan, Erika Taylor, Lauren A Talbert-Slagle, Kristina M Bradley, Elizabeth H |
author_sort | Sipsma, Heather L |
collection | PubMed |
description | OBJECTIVE: To examine whether state-level spending on social and public health services is associated with lower rates of homicide in the USA. DESIGN: Ecological study. SETTING: USA. PARTICIPANTS: All states in the USA and the District of Columbia for which data were available (n=42). PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURE: Homicide rates for each state were abstracted from the US Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting. RESULTS: After adjusting for potential confounding variables, we found that every $10 000 increase in spending per person living in poverty was associated with 0.87 fewer homicides per 100 000 population or approximately a 16% decrease in the average homicide rate (estimate=−0.87, SE=0.15, p<0.001). Furthermore, there was no significant effect in the quartile of states with the highest percentages of individuals living in poverty but significant effects in the quartiles of states with lower percentages of individuals living in poverty. CONCLUSIONS: Based on our findings, spending on social and public health services is associated with significantly lower homicide rates at the state level. Although we cannot infer causality from this research, such spending may provide promising avenues for homicide reduction in the USA, particularly among states with lower levels of poverty. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5652551 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | BMJ Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-56525512017-10-27 Spending on social and public health services and its association with homicide in the USA: an ecological study Sipsma, Heather L Canavan, Maureen E Rogan, Erika Taylor, Lauren A Talbert-Slagle, Kristina M Bradley, Elizabeth H BMJ Open Health Services Research OBJECTIVE: To examine whether state-level spending on social and public health services is associated with lower rates of homicide in the USA. DESIGN: Ecological study. SETTING: USA. PARTICIPANTS: All states in the USA and the District of Columbia for which data were available (n=42). PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURE: Homicide rates for each state were abstracted from the US Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting. RESULTS: After adjusting for potential confounding variables, we found that every $10 000 increase in spending per person living in poverty was associated with 0.87 fewer homicides per 100 000 population or approximately a 16% decrease in the average homicide rate (estimate=−0.87, SE=0.15, p<0.001). Furthermore, there was no significant effect in the quartile of states with the highest percentages of individuals living in poverty but significant effects in the quartiles of states with lower percentages of individuals living in poverty. CONCLUSIONS: Based on our findings, spending on social and public health services is associated with significantly lower homicide rates at the state level. Although we cannot infer causality from this research, such spending may provide promising avenues for homicide reduction in the USA, particularly among states with lower levels of poverty. BMJ Publishing Group 2017-10-12 /pmc/articles/PMC5652551/ /pubmed/29025831 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016379 Text en © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2017. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted. This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Health Services Research Sipsma, Heather L Canavan, Maureen E Rogan, Erika Taylor, Lauren A Talbert-Slagle, Kristina M Bradley, Elizabeth H Spending on social and public health services and its association with homicide in the USA: an ecological study |
title | Spending on social and public health services and its association with homicide in the USA: an ecological study |
title_full | Spending on social and public health services and its association with homicide in the USA: an ecological study |
title_fullStr | Spending on social and public health services and its association with homicide in the USA: an ecological study |
title_full_unstemmed | Spending on social and public health services and its association with homicide in the USA: an ecological study |
title_short | Spending on social and public health services and its association with homicide in the USA: an ecological study |
title_sort | spending on social and public health services and its association with homicide in the usa: an ecological study |
topic | Health Services Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5652551/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29025831 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016379 |
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