CDC: Fatal abusive head trauma among children down in the US

(HealthDay)—Half as many infants and preschoolers in the United States are dying from abusive head trauma as in 2009, according to research published in the May 27 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

National rates of abusive head trauma held steady from 1999 to 2009, and fell significantly after 2009. Deaths of children under age 5 from this form of violence dropped an average 13 percent annually between 2009 and 2014, with the biggest decrease in the last two years of the study.

Nearly 2,250 deaths of children under 5 from intentional head injury occurred between 1999 and 2014, the CDC said. Eighty-six took place in 2014—down from 179 five years earlier.

"Prevention of child maltreatment requires understanding and addressing behavioral and environmental characteristics that increase and reduce the risk for child maltreatment," the authors of the report write. "There is growing evidence that child maltreatment prevention strategies, such as those that change interactions, including those between parents and children, parents and other caregivers, and parents and health care providers are effective interventions."