Vulnerability & Youth Firearm Injury Trends

Firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death among U.S. youth

Explore new data from Vizient revealing sharp disparities by race, age, and community vulnerability—plus what health systems can do about it.

Data source

Analyses are based on the Vizient Clinical Data Base, which includes over 1,300 U.S. hospitals—comprising >98% of academic medical centers and more than 750 community hospitals. The data reflect treat-and-release emergency department (ED) visits among patients ages 0–19 between 2019 and 2024. Visits resulting in inpatient admission were excluded.

Firearm injury identification

The analysis includes 33.3 million pediatric ED visits from 531 hospitals reporting consistently over the study period. A total of 21,806 firearm-related injuries were identified using ICD-10-CM codes. Relevant comorbid mental health and social risk codes were also included.

Additional note

The Vizient Vulnerability Index, a publicly available tool, was leveraged to contextualize community-level health-related social risk factors.