Newswise — CHICAGO-- According to a report by the Injury Prevention and Research Center at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, the overall homicide rate per 100,000 in the city of Chicago increased by 8.6 percent from 2005 (17.32) to 2015 (18.81). Over those same years, homicide rates for African Americans in Chicago increased by 28.7 percent (36.14 to 46.52), and homicide rates among youth 20 to 24 years old increased by 21.2 percent (53.02 to 64.28).
Data are from the Illinois Violent Death Reporting System (IVDRS), which is part of the National Violent Death Reporting System. The IVDRS pools information about the “who, when, where and how” of violent deaths in Chicago and across Illinois, to provide a more complete picture and inform insights into “why” they occur. “IVDRS increases our knowledge about who is most at risk, the type of weapons used and trends over time in violent deaths,” said Maryann Mason, PhD, Principal Investigator at the Mary Ann and J. Milburn Smith Child Health Research Center of the Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute of Lurie Children’s. “These data provide the foundation for building successful policies and programs to prevent violence in Chicago communities.”
The report also shows that firearms were used in almost 90 percent of homicides. “Seeing that number of firearm use compared to other weapons used is staggering,” said Karen Sheehan, MD, MPH, Emergency Department physician and Professor of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. “Gun violence remains the leading cause of death for young people in Chicago. Although this is appalling, we shouldn’t be surprised. Currently, there is limited funding to support high quality firearm injury prevention research. If we truly want to prevent firearm injuries and death, we will treat this like the public health crisis it is and invest in understanding and addressing this epidemic.”
Other key takeaways from the report include: • Rate of homicides for Hispanics increased 7.6 percent from 2005 (10.54 per 100,000) to 2015 (11.34 per 100,000) and the rate of homicides for whites decreased by 40 percent (4.39 to 2.65 per 100,000) in Chicago• In 2015, homicide rates were more than 10 times higher for men (35.23 per 100,000) than for women (3.48 per 100,000) • In 2015, 20- to 24-year-olds had the highest homicide rates, and the group with the next highest rate was 15- to 19-year-olds (46.69 per 100,000)• From 2005 to 2015, homicide rates for other age groups of children and adults did not change significantly in Chicago.
In 2014, Illinois became one of 32 NVDRS states funded by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. The IVDRS is a project of the Injury Prevention and Research Center of the Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute at Lurie Children’s and collects data from five Illinois counties (Cook, DuPage, Kane, McHenry, Peoria) that account for 60 percent of violent deaths in Illinois annually. Lurie Children’s is ranked as one of the nation’s top children’s hospitals in the U.S.News & World Report. It is the pediatric training site for Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Last year, the hospital served more than 174,000 children from 50 states and 48 countries.
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