MOSCOW, August 14 (RIA Novosti) - The University of Michigan CS Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health (NPCH) reveals gun violence in schools is among the top-five concerns US parents have for their children, the New York Daily News reports.
Children ages 5-14 in America are 13 times more likely to be killed by guns than children in other industrialized countries according to Professor of Health Policy and Director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center David Hemenway, Ph.D.
The poll marks the first time gun violence in schools has ranked in the top five. In a 2003 report entitled “Homicide, Suicide, and Unintentional Firearm Fatality: Comparing the United States with Other High-Income Countries,” Hemenway and EG Richardson found that approximately 80 percent of all firearm deaths occurred in the US, and 87 percent of children aged 0-14 killed by firearms were in the US.
Since 1992, 387 school shootings have been recorded, according to stoptheshootings.org, an information resource on school shootings in the US. The site also reports that 59 percent of victims killed in school shootings are 10-19 years old, while 69 percent firearms attacks were perpetrated by those in the 10-19 age range.
One of the deadliest US shootings occurred on December 14, 2012, at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut resulting in 28 fatalities.
The NPCH poll revealed obesity as the top concern among American families, while school shootings ranked fifth and gun-related injuries ranked ninth. Also ranked in the top ten were bullying, drug abuse, smoking, child abuse, alcohol, internet safety and teen pregnancy, according to the poll.
The poll uses a nationally representative scientific sample of approximately 2,000 US households, with and without children, in order to collect data with the goal of informing new policy initiatives and research ideas concerning children’s health issues, according to the University of Michigan website.
