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. 2016 Sep 28;1(1):e000024.
doi: 10.1136/tsaco-2016-000024. eCollection 2016.

Hospital-based violence intervention programs targeting adult populations: an Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma evidence-based review

Steven Affinati  1 , Desmond Patton  2 , Luke Hansen  3 , Megan Ranney  4 , A Britton Christmas  5 , Pina Violano  6 , Aparna Sodhi  7 , Bryce Robinson  8 , Marie Crandall  9 ; from the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma Injury Control and Violence Prevention Section and Guidelines Section
Affiliations

Hospital-based violence intervention programs targeting adult populations: an Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma evidence-based review

Steven Affinati et al. Trauma Surg Acute Care Open. .

Abstract

Background: Violent injury and reinjury take a devastating toll on distressed communities. Many trauma centers have created hospital-based violent injury prevention programs (HVIP) to address psychosocial, educational, and mental health needs of injured patients that may contribute to reinjury.

Objectives: To evaluate the overall effectiveness of HVIPs for violent injury prevention. We performed an evidence-based review to answer the following population, intervention, comparator, outcomes (PICO) question: Are HVIPs attending to adult patients (age 18+) treated for intentional injury more effective than the usual care at preventing: intentional violent reinjury and/or death; arrest and/or incarceration; substance abuse and/or mental issues; job and/or school attainment?

Data sources: PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and the Cochrane Library were queried for salient articles by a professional librarian on two separate occasions, and related articles were identified from references.

Study eligibility criteria participants interventions: Eligible studies examined adult patients treated for intentional injury in a hospital-based violence prevention program compared to a control group.

Study appraisal and synthesis methods: We used the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation methodology to assess the breadth and quality of the evidence.

Results: 71 articles were identified. After discarding duplicates, reviews, and those articles that did not address our PICO questions, we ultimately reviewed 10 articles. We found insufficient evidence to recommend adult-focused HVIP interventions.

Limitations: There was a relative paucity of data, and available studies were limited by self-selection bias and small sample sizes.

Conclusions: We make no recommendation with respect to adult-focused HVIP interventions.

Keywords: injury prevention; violence.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
MeSH search terms.
Figure 2
Figure 2
PRISMA flow diagram.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

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