The socio-economic and demographic context of children's emergency injury visits in Helsinki in 1991-1994.

The aim is to study the association between age- and diagnosis-specific trauma visit rates and socio-economic and demographic variables in the city of Helsinki, Finland. A total of 19,772 home and leisure injury visits were analysed by random effects (REM) and Poisson regression models. Visit rates were calculated for age- and diagnosis-specific groups for each of the city's 33 health districts using the corresponding age-specific census data. In addition, the areas were ranked into three groups according to a socio-economic index measure. The annual visit rates of the three groups were calculated and the effect of distance on visit rates by socio-economic groups was analysed. In the case of pre-school children no correlation was found between explanatory variables and trauma visit rates. In the school-aged children group distance from the hospital (p < 0.001) correlated with childhood ambulatory visit rates. We found a rather modest difference in children's visit rates between unequal socio-economic areas. However, the demand for care was elastic for travelling distance (p < 0.05) in poorer suburbs but not in more affluent areas in the case of school-aged children. The probability of significant inequalities in children's trauma visit rates was small in Helsinki during 1991-94.