Background: Understanding of the specific risk of agricultural injury sustained by different populations of children and adolescents is needed for effective safety intervention.
Objective: To compare the rates and patterns of agricultural injury incidence (fatal and non-fatal injury) between farm and non-farm children less than 18 years of age in Alberta, Canada.
Methods: A total of 115 378 children (five subgroups: two groups of farm children and three groups of non-farm children) in Alberta were followed from 1999 to 2010 to examine injury incidence using the linkage of three administrative health databases. A recurrent event survival analysis using Cox proportional hazards regression was carried out.
Results: A total of 1 849 agricultural injury episodes (1 616 emergency department visits, 225 hospitalizations, and 8 deaths) were identified from 1999 to 2010. The age- and gender-adjusted rate (per 100 000 person years) of agricultural injury was 672.3 for rural-living farm children, 369.4 for urban-living farm children, 180.2 for rural non-First Nations (FN) children, 64.4 for rural FN children, and 23.7 for urban children in descending order.
Conclusion: Specific strategies for different children's populations to prevent agricultural injuries and to extend agricultural injury controls to non-farming populations are needed.
Keywords: adolescents; agriculture; children; farm; injury; non-farm.
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