CINCINNATI — There are no accidents — that's what health officials at Cincinnati's Children's Hospital say when it comes to kids and injuries. Of the 20,000 children showing up in the emergency room with injuries each year, physicians argue most are preventable.
"We don't use the words 'car accident,' we use the words 'car crash,'" said Dr. Wendy Pomerantz, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Children's. "Kids get into medications. Lock them up. Kids get into guns. Lock them up. Kids get into car crashes — make sure they have a seat belt on. Make sure that if they need a car seat, they're in a car seat. When they need a booster seat, make sure they're in a booster seat."
Unintentional injuries combined are the leading cause of death for children nationwide. Non-fatal injuries requiring medical attention affect approximately 20 million children and adolescents and exceed $17 billion annually in medical costs.
Unintentional injuries include falls, burns, poisonings, drownings, traffic-related injuries and gunshot wounds — which have spiked locally in the past five years.
Children's Comprehensive Children’s Injury Center (CCIC) aims to reduce the burden of unintentional injury on the health and well-being of children and adolescents by leading prevention efforts, research, clinical outcomes, education, and advocacy in the community.
Recently, the team of injury prevention specialists hosted a free event at Rising Stars Academy in Mount Auburn to teach parents how to fit their children's car seats properly. Some parents were given free car seats to take home.
The school's principal contacted Children's after noticing a need for the resources. The car seat checks were done on National Injury Prevention Day to raise awareness and educate the community.
"If they're too big for the car seat, put them in a booster seat. They absolutely save lives," Pomerantz said.
Denisha Taylor signed up for the event. Her 3-year-old son had outgrown the configuration of his car seat and her busy working schedule made it difficult for her to get help sooner.
"I didn't know what I was doing," Taylor said. "I thought about going to the fire department and didn't really have the time so it was awesome that (Children's) did the event here so I could get it done at the comfort of school and I can go about my day and not worry about it."
Each year, around 1,000 kids coming through Children's ER are involved in car crashes. Roughly 35-40 are directly hit by cars.
"I can't tell you how proud I am when someone comes in with a car crash and you see they were in a booster seat because the marks are around their pelvis and not their belly and if they wouldn't have had that they would have had severe internal injuries," Pomerantz said.
Car safety wasn't the only focus at the recent event. The team also sent parents home with household items including gun locks, cabinet latches and medication lock boxes.
While car crashes remain a leader in local pediatric hospitalizations, Pomerantz said two other causes are climbing the charts.
The ER sees approximately 50 gunshot victims each year.
"We don't want our little kids unintentionally shooting each other," Pomerantz said. "We don't want kids killing themselves with guns, and neither do the families, so you just lock it up. And that is one of the biggest ways to help."
The past five years have also seen another drastic increase: cannabis ingestion. This year to date, Children's has seen more than 100 kids under the age of 6 with cannabis poisoning-related illnesses.
Children have become more exposed to cannabis since its legalization in the state of Ohio and the drug's varying forms of availability, Pomerantz said.
"Those are the kids that look at it and say, 'Oh, I'm going to eat this gummy or I'm going to eat this brownie,'" Pomerantz said. "There's a lot of candy as well that has cannabis in it. The challenge with cannabis is, is that they look appealing. You can buy stuff that looks like Pop-Tarts. You can buy stuff that looks like regular candy — gummy candy — and kids just want to eat it."
Typical cannabis ingestion for adults is around five to 10 milligrams. Some gummy options can contain more than 100 milligrams of cannabis. While that concentration can make an adult sick, it can hospitalize a child — even kill them.
"Around two-thirds of the kids that we see with cannabis ingestions get admitted. So a lot of kids. Because they're little and now they're taking a lot of medication that they shouldn't be taking," Pomerantz said.
Health officials said they expect pediatric cannabis-related hospitalizations will only increase if necessary preventative measures are not taken to secure the drug. The same goes for gunshot wounds.
Children's offers multiple resources and community-based programs to families to aid in injury prevention through its CCIC.
As a Level 1 Trauma Center, Children's is among 42 member sites with Injury Free Coalition for Kids. You can find more safety tips on the organization's website.
"If you can impact at least one child, one family, then you're doing your job right," said Pomerantz.
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