Using a new technique to study the mortality associated with motor vehicle crashes, we calculated population-based death rates of occupants of motor vehicles during the period 1979 through 1981 and mapped them according to county for the 48 contiguous states of the United States. Mortality was highest in counties of low population density (r = 0.57; P less than 0.0001) and was also inversely correlated with per capita income (r = 0.23; P less than 0.0001). Death rates varied more than 100-fold; for example, Esmeralda County, Nevada, with 0.2 residents per square mile (2.6 km2), had a death rate of 558 per 100,000 population, as compared with Manhattan, New York, with 64,000 residents per square mile and a death rate of 2.5 per 100,000. Differences in road characteristics, travel speeds, seat-belt use, types of vehicles, and availability of emergency care may have been major contributors to these relations.
Parents and others who transport children should be strongly encouraged to place infants and children in rear seats whether or not vehicles have airbags. Existing laws requiring restraint use by children should be strengthened and actively enforced.
Public Health Briefs within state health agencies, yet they also demonstrate changes in expenditures between fiscal years 1984 and 1989 that suggest declines in oral health programs within many agencies. Most noteworthy may be the increasing number of states that reported no categorical expenditures for oral health (for fiscal year 1989, 7 states [14%] of those responding to the Public Health Foundation survey). A 1991 survey of the Association of State and Territorial Dental Directors (unpublished data) suggests that, 2 years after the most recent Public Health Foundation data, the number may have been as high as 12 states and that an additional 13 states had lower oral health expenditures than 2 years earlier. Thus, in fiscal year 1991, nearly half of state health agencies were affected by dwindling oral health expenditures or a total lack of such expenditures.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.