Emergency Visits and Hospitalizations for Child Abuse During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

* Abbreviations: COVID-19 — : coronavirus disease 2019 CPA — : child physical abuse ED — : emergency department H-RISK — : hospitalization resource intensity scores for kids PHIS — : Pediatric Health Information System Economic recession and natural disasters have been associated with increases in child physical abuse (CPA).1,2 Our objectives were to compare the volume and severity of CPA encounters in children’s hospitals during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic to that of previous years. We conducted a retrospective cohort study of emergency department (ED) and inpatient encounters for children ≤5 years old in the Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS) (administrative database from 52 US children’s hospitals).3 This study was deemed exempt by the Institutional Review Board of the University of California, San Francisco. We compared the volume of CPA encounters from January 1 to August 31, 2020, to that of the same time frame in previous years (2017–2019) to understand overall trends. We compared the severity of CPA encounters during the COVID-19 pandemic period (defined as March 16 to August 31, 2020) to that of the same time frame in previous years (2017–2019). Our primary outcome was the change in volume of encounters in … Address correspondence to Sunitha V. Kaiser, University of California, San Francisco, 550 16th St, Box 3214, San Francisco, CA 94158. E-mail: sunitha.kaiser{at}ucsf.edu