African-Americans in major U.S. cities are significantly more likely to live in “trauma deserts” with limited access to advanced emergency medical care, according to new research from the University of Chicago Medicine. The study also shows the academic medical center’s new Level 1 Trauma Center led to a seven-fold reduction in Chicago’s access disparity.
The findings, published March 8 in the journal JAMA Network Open, are the first to be released about the impact of UChicago Medicine’s adult Level 1 Trauma Center. Adult trauma services at the hospital began in May 2018.
“So much of the advocacy for the trauma center was framed in terms of racial equity,” said Elizabeth Tung, MD, MS, a primary care physician and instructor of medicine at UChicago Medicine who was the paper’s first author. “But we realized no previous studies had addressed trauma access through the lens of race/ethnicity – not just looking at Chicago, but comparing our city to other communities as well.”