<p><strong>Importance: </strong>Infants who appear neurologically well and have fractures concerning for abuse are at increased risk for clinically occult head injuries. Evidence of excess variation in neuroimaging practices when abuse is suspected may indicate opportunity for quality and safety improvement.</p>

<p><strong>Objective: </strong>To quantify neuroimaging practice variation across children's hospitals among infants with fractures evaluated for abuse, with the hypothesis that hospitals would vary substantially in neuroimaging practices. As a secondary objective, factors associated with neuroimaging use were identified, with the hypothesis that age and factors associated with potential biases (ie, payer type and race or ethnicity) would be associated with neuroimaging use.</p>

<p><strong>Design, Setting, and Participants: </strong>This cross-sectional study included infants with a femur or humerus fracture or both undergoing abuse evaluation at 44 select US children's hospitals in the Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS) from January 1, 2016, through March 30, 2020, including emergency department, observational, and inpatient encounters. Included infants were aged younger than 12 months with a femur or humerus fracture or both without overt signs or symptoms of head injury for whom a skeletal survey was performed. To focus on infants at increased risk for clinically occult head injuries, infants with billing codes suggestive of overt neurologic signs or symptoms were excluded. Multivariable logistic regression was used to investigate demographic, clinical, and temporal factors associated with use of neuroimaging. Marginal standardization was used to report adjusted percentages of infants undergoing neuroimaging by hospital and payer type. Data were analyzed from March 2021 through January 2022.</p>

<p><strong>Exposures: </strong>Covariates included age, sex, race and ethnicity, payer type, fracture type, presentation year, and hospital.</p>

<p><strong>Main Outcomes and Measures: </strong>Use of neuroimaging by CT or MRI.</p>

<p><strong>Results: </strong>Of 2585 infants with humerus or femur fracture or both undergoing evaluations for possible child abuse, there were 1408 (54.5%) male infants, 1726 infants (66.8%) who were publicly insured, and 1549 infants (59.9%) who underwent neuroimaging. The median (IQR) age was 6.1 (3.2-8.3) months. There were 748 (28.9%) Black non-Hispanic infants, 426 (16.5%) Hispanic infants, 1148 (44.4%) White non-Hispanic infants. In multivariable analyses, younger age (eg, odds ratio [OR] for ages &lt;3 months vs ages 9 to &lt;12 months, 13.2; 95% CI, 9.54-18.2; P &lt; .001), male sex (OR, 1.47; 95% CI, 1.22-1.78; P &lt; .001), payer type (OR for public vs private insurance, 1.48; 95% CI, 1.18-1.85; P = .003), fracture type (OR for femur and humerus fracture vs isolated femur fracture, 5.36; 95% CI, 2.11-13.6; P = .002), and hospital (adjusted range in use of neuroimaging, 37.4% [95% CI 21.4%-53.5%] to 83.6% [95% CI 69.6%-97.5%]; P &lt; .001) were associated with increased use of neuroimaging, but race and ethnicity were not. Publicly insured infants were more likely to undergo neuroimaging (62.0%; 95% CI, 60.0%-64.1%) than privately insured infants (55.1%; 95% CI, 51.8%-58.4%) (P = .001).</p>

<p><strong>Conclusions and Relevance: </strong>This study found that hospitals varied in neuroimaging practices among infants with concern for abuse. Apparent disparities in practice associated with insurance type suggest opportunities for quality, safety, and equity improvement.</p>

<p><strong>OBJECTIVE: </strong>To assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on physical abuse in young children, we compared the following before and during the pandemic: (1) skeletal survey volume, (2) percent of skeletal surveys revealing clinically unsuspected (occult) fractures, and (3) clinical severity of presentation. We hypothesized that during the pandemic, children with minor abusive injuries would be less likely to present for care, but severely injured children would present at a comparable rate to prepandemic times. We expected that during the pandemic, the volume of skeletal surveys would decrease but the percentage revealing occult fractures would increase and that injury severity would increase.</p>

<p><strong>METHODS: </strong>We conducted a retrospective study of children younger than 2 years undergoing skeletal surveys because of concern for physical abuse at a tertiary children's hospital. Subjects were identified by querying a radiology database during the March 15, 2019-October 15, 2019 (pre-COVID-19) period and the March 15, 2020-October 15, 2020 (COVID-19) period, followed by chart review to refine our population and abstract clinical and imaging data.</p>

<p><strong>RESULTS: </strong>Pre-COVID-19, 160 skeletal surveys were performed meeting the inclusion criteria, compared with 125 during COVID-19, representing a 22% decrease. No change was observed in identification of occult fractures (6.9% pre-COVID vs 6.4% COVID, P = 0.87). Clinical severity of presentation did not change, and child protective services involvement/referral decreased during COVID.</p>

<p><strong>CONCLUSIONS: </strong>Despite a &gt;20% decrease in skeletal survey performance early in the pandemic, the percent of skeletal surveys revealing occult fractures did not increase. Our results suggest that decreases in medical evaluations for abuse did not stem from decreased presentation of less severely injured children.</p>

<p><strong>OBJECTIVES: </strong>To explore the relative risks of preterm birth-both overall and stratified into three groups (late, moderate and extreme prematurity)-associated with maternal race, ethnicity and nativity (ie, birthplace) combined.</p>

<p><strong>STUDY DESIGN: </strong>This was a retrospective cross-sectional cohort study of women delivering a live birth in Pennsylvania from 2011-2014 (n=4,499,259). Log binomial and multinomial regression analyses determined the relative risks of each strata of preterm birth by racial/ethnic/native category, after adjusting for maternal sociodemographic, medical comorbidities and birth year.</p>

<p><strong>RESULTS: </strong>Foreign-born women overall had lower relative risks of both overall preterm birth and each strata of prematurity when examined en bloc. However, when considering maternal race, ethnicity and nativity together, the relative risk of preterm birth for women in different racial/ethnic/nativity groups varied by preterm strata and by race. Being foreign-born appeared protective for late prematurity. However, only foreign-born White women had lower adjusted relative risks of moderate and extreme preterm birth compared with reference groups. All ethnic/native sub-groups of Black women had a significantly increased risk of extreme preterm births compared with US born non-Hispanic White women.</p>

<p><strong>CONCLUSIONS: </strong>Race, ethnicity and nativity contribute differently to varying levels of prematurity. Future research involving birth outcome disparities may benefit by taking a more granular approach to the outcome of preterm birth and considering how nativity interacts with race and ethnicity.</p>