Tag Archives: alpert medical school

Analysis: 32 years of U.S. filicide arrests

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Over the last three decades U.S. parents have committed filicide — the killing of one’s child — about 3,000 times every year. The horrifying instances are often poorly understood, but a recent study provides the first comprehensive statistical overview of the tragic phenomenon. The authors also suggest underlying hypotheses of motives with the hope of spurring research on filicide prevention.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Instances in which parents kill their children may seem so horrifying and tragic that they defy explanation. Published scientific and medical research, meanwhile, doesn’t offer much epidemiological context to help people understand patterns among such heinous crimes. A paper in the March edition of the journal Forensic Science International provides the first comprehensive statistical analysis of filicide in the United States, drawing on 32 years of data on more than 94,000 arrests. The study also explores possible underlying psychiatric and biological underpinnings of filicide. (more…)

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The cost of emergency care: Emergency care cost estimates are too low

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U.S. emergency care costs may be more than twice previously published estimates, according to a new analysis that critiques those estimates, argues for improved accounting, and suggests considering the value of emergency care as well as total spending.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Alternately praised in the aftermath of horrible tragedies as a heroic service and lamented in policy debates as an expensive safety net for people without primary care, emergency medicine is often a hot topic. Despite that importance, an analysis published online April 26 in the Annals of Emergency Medicine finds that national expenditures on emergency care are likely significantly higher than previously thought.

“The ER has become increasingly important as a place where people go for acute unscheduled care, however there has been little rigorous analysis of its cost structure,” said paper lead author Dr. Michael Lee, assistant professor of emergency medicine in the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a physician at Rhode Island Hospital and The Miriam Hospital. (more…)

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