Assessing Community-Based Injury Prevention Services in U.S. Children's Hospitals

OBJECTIVE: Not-for-profit hospitals are required to meet federal reporting requirements detailing their community benefit activities, which support their tax-exempt status. Children's hospitals have long provided community injury prevention (IP) programming and thus can inform public health outreach work in other areas. This work describes IP programming as a community service offered by children's hospitals in the U.S. METHODS: The IP specialist at 232 US-based member institutions of the Children's Hospital Association were invited to complete an assessment of their hospital's IP outreach programming. RESULTS: 47.7 percent of hospitals request financial data from IP programming for tax reporting purposes. Almost all offer injury prevention (IP) services; the majority are in the community (60.3%) and 34.5% are hospital-based. Most IP units are independent (60.3%) and 71.8% are responsible for their own budgets. CONCLUSIONS: By integrating dissemination and implementation sciences and community health needs assessments, these findings can help advance community services provided by hospitals to impact public health.