The Impact of COVID-19 on Infant Maltreatment Emergency Department and Inpatient Medical Encounters.

Objective: To assess the counts of infant maltreatment-related medical encounters at a large medical system during a 21-month span of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: Retrospective data for this study came from all inpatient and emergency department medical encounters for infants from January 1, 2016, through November 30, 2021, at a single children's hospital system in California. Distributions of medical encounters were tabulated and plotted over time. Interrupted time series models were used to evaluate changes in child maltreatment medical encounters.
Results: Medical encounters for infants with child maltreatment diagnoses increased following the onset of COVID-19. Monthly counts of encounters with indicated maltreatment trended upward following the start of the pandemic. Interrupted time series models showed that the count of maltreatment encounters increased 64% with the onset of COVID-19.
Conclusions: We found an increase in infant maltreatment medical encounters during a 21-month period following the onset of COVID-19. These findings suggest that the pandemic may have adversely affected the safety of infants and ongoing work is needed to understand better the pandemic impacts on child maltreatment.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest Funding for this project came from NICHD R21HD105907. The Children's Data Network also receives essential infrastructure funding from First 5 LA, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, The Reissa Foundation, and the Heising-Simons Foundation. The authors do not have conflicts of interest to disclose. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or any other funder or data partner.
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