Assessing Community-Based Injury Prevention Services in U.S. Children's Hospitals

Objective Not-for-profit hospitals are required to meet federal reporting requirements detailing their community benefit activities, which support their tax-exempt status. Children's hospitals have long provided community injury prevention (IP) programming and thus can inform public health outreach work in other areas. This work describes IP programming as a community service offered by children's hospitals in the U.S. Methods The IP specialist at 232 US-based member institutions of the Children's Hospital Association were invited to complete an assessment of their hospital's IP outreach programming. Results 47.7 percent of hospitals request financial data from IP programming for tax reporting purposes. Almost all offer injury prevention (IP) services; the majority are in the community (60.3%) and 34.5% are hospital-based. Most IP units are independent (60.3%) and 71.8% are responsible for their own budgets. Conclusions By integrating dissemination and implementation sciences and community health needs assessments, these findings can help advance community services provided by hospitals to impact public health.