Childhood injuries tend to be less common in ethnic minority families

New research has found that children from certain minority ethnic backgrounds experience fewer injuries than children from White British backgrounds. This is despite them being more likely to experience poverty and to live in poor-quality housing, which are known to be risk factors for childhood injury.  

The research published in the Injury Epidemiology journal finds that children from Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Black African ethnicities have lower injury rates, and this trend is more prevalent among children whose mothers are born outside the UK.  

Most childhood injuries are unintentional and are a persistent public health issue, bringing an estimated 7% of deaths among children under the age of five and resulting in disability and loss of quality of life. These include injuries caused by road traffic accidents, burns, sports injuries, falls, drowning, suffocation, and poisonings.  

What the researchers looked at

The Ulster University researchers analysed data from more than 12,700 children, born in 2000-02, who are taking part in the Millennium Cohort Study. At age five, biological mothers of study participants reported whether their child had an accident or injury for which they required professional medical attention in the past two years.  

Information about the ethnic group of the participant and mother’s country of birth was collected when they were three years old. Data was also collected about their socioeconomic circumstances, housing conditions and values related to family, parenting and behaviours.

What they found

The researchers found that apart from children from Indian backgrounds, minority ethnic children were more likely to experience poverty and live in poor-quality housing, with Black African and Black Caribbean families mostly residing in social housing. Researchers also found that a higher percentage of minority ethnic mothers were born abroad, and they were more likely to report lower levels of income. 

Despite facing these challenges, the findings revealed a lower likelihood of injury in children from these backgrounds. This protective effect was strongest for a child of a first-generation immigrant mother. For minority ethnic children including Pakistani or Bangladeshi children with UK-born mothers the injury rates remained the same as those of White British children, suggesting the crucial role mother’s migration status plays in reducing injury risk. 

The authors explained: “Our findings suggest that minority ethnic children may be less likely to get injured because of their cultural practices. For example, it is more common in some minority ethnic communities to have a grandparent or a non-parent adult living in the same house. With more eyes to supervise young ones, this could reduce the chances of them getting hurt. The findings also reveal that minority ethnic families are less likely to believe that it is a good idea for a mother to return to work before the child starts school. Mothers born abroad also reported lower alcohol use and higher religious values. All these differences could potentially play a role in reducing the risk of childhood injury.”

“Future public health guidance on injury prevention should move away from the biases that focus on health inequalities due to ethnic disadvantage and emphasise the protective factors that ethnic cultural practices can offer.” 

Read the full paper 

‘Socioeconomic circumstances, ethnicity, migration and unintentional early childhood injuries: an analysis of the UK millennium cohort study,’ by Laura Gallagher, Emma Curran, Michael Rosato and Gerard Leavey.