
Desmond Kimo RunyanUniversity of Colorado | UCD · Department of Pediatrics
Desmond Kimo Runyan
MD, DrPH
About
183
Publications
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
October 2018 - present
August 2011 - September 2018
July 1981 - July 2011
Education
December 1979 - September 1983
July 1979 - June 1981
July 1976 - June 1979
Publications
Publications (183)
In this research, we investigate the relationship between provision of healthcare and psychological maltreatment (PM) in children. The study hypothesizes that parents’ difficulties in provision of healthcare, specifically in buying medications (potential medical neglect), may be related to increased psychological maltreatment towards their children...
Purpose
To examine the association of increasing access to affordable housing through the Low-income Housing Tax Credit Program with non-fatal intimate partner violence (IPV) among women.
Methods
We used 2005–2014 data from the State Emergency Department Database (SEDD) and the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) program, a federal program provi...
Statement of Purpose
To examine the association of the availability of housing units through the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) program with rates of child maltreatment reports and intimate partner violence (IPV) related homicides at the state level.
Methods/Approach
We conducted secondary data analyses of the National Child Abuse and Negle...
Introduction
Poverty broadly and financial stress owing to housing insecurity specifically are associated with an increased risk of child maltreatment. Therefore, it is possible that a program designed to increase access to affordable housing such as the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program could reduce child maltreatment. The purpose of this stud...
Does low maternal social capital increase the likelihood of parents using harsh parenting behaviors? We analyzed random digit dial telephone survey data from 661 female primary caregivers across Colorado. Positive reports of the use of either physically or psychologically harsh parenting methods were classified as harsh parenting. Absence of social...
The most severe outcome of intimate partner violence (IPV) is IPV-related homicide. Access to affordable housing may both facilitate exit from abusive relationships and reduce financial-related stress in intimate relationships, potentially preventing IPV-related homicide. We examined the association of the availability of rental housing through the...
Introduction
People with Down syndrome have health risks that require specific lifelong preventive health care. With increasing life expectancy, people with Down syndrome also face health conditions typical of their unaffected peers and thus need coordinated health care. The purpose of this study is to describe rates of age/sex- and Down syndrome–s...
Background
Persons with Down syndrome (DS) require preventive care that addresses their age-/gender- and syndrome-specific needs. Yet, adolescents and adults with DS do not receive these preventive care services as recommended.
Objective/hypothesis
To identify factors that predict receipt of age-/gender- and syndrome-specific preventive healthcare...
Actually ending the abuse and neglect of children will require doing something other than continuing the current approaches to child protection. This commentary addresses suggestios made in 3 papers submitted as part of a competition to garner proposals for disrupting the current system for better outcomes. Three papers were submitted suggesting ch...
Background:
Computed tomography (CT) is commonly used for children when there is concern for traumatic brain injury (TBI) and is a significant source of ionizing radiation. Our objective was to determine the feasibility and accuracy of fast MRI (motion-tolerant MRI sequences performed without sedation) in young children.
Methods:
In this prospec...
In this chapter, we draw on the epidemiology of child abuse to make the case for the importance of taking a public health approach to the problem. From there, we describe the elements of a public health approach and apply them to the prevention of child abuse and neglect, distinguishing the public health perspectives from those of other disciplines...
Examines the decline in child abuse to explore whether the dramatic decline in intimate partner violence can explain the decline in substantiated child abuse. while it explains some of the decline, the decline in teen pregnancy explains more of the decline since 2000.
Get practical and essential evidence-based guidelines and AAP references for evaluating and treating sentinel injuries, physical abuse, and sexual abuse.
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In this issue of JAMA, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) presents its 2018 recommendation on primary care interventions to prevent child maltreatment.¹ This report is accompanied by the evidence review that supports the statement and that involved examination of 22 clinical trials involving more than 11 000 children.² Most of the trial...
Rates of intimate partner violence (IPV), child physical and sexual abuse, and adolescent births, have declined dramatically since 1993. Research has confirmed increased risk of physical and psychological abuse of children living in homes with IPV or with adolescent parents. We wondered how much of the decline observed in child abuse substantiation...
Purpose
Data from India and other low and middle-income countries reveal high rates of the parental shaking in poor communities. Other Indian data reveal high rates of intellectual disability among children. The confluence of these observations provide an opportunity to understand the nature and consequences of potentially harmful child discipline...
Child abuse is a social phenomenon that has been under-researched and under-supported. The scale of the problem is large with over 3 million US children reported for abuse or neglect each year. An estimated 15% of confirmed victims may be placed in out-of-home care to ensure their safety. Studies have not previously examined the impact of losing a...
Importance:
Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring is a mainstay of therapy for children with traumatic brain injury (TBI), but its overall association with patient outcome is unclear.
Objective:
To test the hypothesis that ICP monitoring is associated with improved functional survival of children with severe TBI.
Design, setting, and participa...
Objective:
To develop and validate case definitions (computable phenotypes) to accurately identify neurosurgical and critical care events in children with traumatic brain injury.
Design:
Prospective observational cohort study, May 2013 to September 2015.
Setting:
Two large U.S. children's hospitals with level 1 Pediatric Trauma Centers.
Patie...
Although child maltreatment medical research has benefited from several multi-center studies, the new specialty of child abuse pediatrics has not had a sustainable network capable of pursuing multiple, prospective, clinically-oriented studies. The Child Abuse Pediatrics Network (CAPNET) is a new multi-center research network dedicated to child malt...
This secondary data analysis examined the risk and protective factor(s) associated with physical neglect within a sample of impoverished children. We conducted a multivariate logistic regression analysis to examine the associations among maternal age, child gender, caregiver depression, caregiver history of maltreatment, income-to-needs ratio, numb...
Objectives:
In children with traumatic brain injury, 1) to describe the hospital discharge functional outcome and change from baseline function using the Functional Status Scale and 2) to determine any associations between discharge Functional Status Scale and age, injury mechanism, neurologic examination, imaging, and other predictors of outcome....
Although child maltreatment has existed through human history, widespread, sustained attention to the problem of child physical abuse has only a 54-year history, after the 1962 publication of The Battered Child Syndrome by Kempe and colleagues.1 Since then, all US states and many foreign countries have passed laws and developed systems to respond t...
Mandated child abuse reporters may judge specific disciplinary practices as unacceptable for young children, whereas child law professionals arbitrating allegations may be less inclusive. Do the views of these groups diverge, by child age, regarding discipline? Judgments of community norms across a wide range of children's ages were obtained from 3...
Child sexual abuse (CSA) continues to be a significant problem with significant short and long term consequences. However, extant literature is limited by the reliance on retrospective recall of adult samples, single-time assessments, and lack of longitudinal data during the childhood and adolescent years. The purpose of this study was to compare i...
Importance
Abusive head trauma (AHT) is a serious condition, with an incidence of approximately 30 cases per 100 000 person-years in the first year of life.Objective
To assess the effectiveness of a statewide universal AHT prevention program.Design, Setting, and Participants
In total, 88.29% of parents of newborns (n = 405 060) in North Carolina...
Objective:
Child physical abuse is commonly missed, putting abused children at risk for repeated injury and death. Several so-called sentinel injuries have been suggested to be associated with high rates of abuse, and to imply the need for routine testing for other, occult traumatic injuries. Our objective was to determine rates of abuse evaluatio...
This chapter treats the epidemiology of child maltreatment as a scientific and public health issue and reviews and compares various methods used to enumerate and chart the incidence and prevalence of child physical abuse, corporal punishment, sexual abuse, and parental behavior such as the shaking of infants. The author discusses the LONGSCAN longi...
Despite growing evidence of links between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and long-term health outcomes, there has been limited longitudinal investigation of such links in youth. The purpose of these analyses was to describe the patterns of exposure to ACEs over time and their links to youth health.
The current analyses used data from LONGSCAN...
Studies in other countries, including countries with mandated reporting by professionals and a long history of recognition of the problem, have found child abuse to be seriously under reported. This population-based pilot study was conducted to determine the magnitude of adolescents' exposure to CAN at home, and to identify ethical and methodologic...
Objective:
To examine national, regional, and state abusive head trauma (AHT) trends using child hospital discharge data by applying a new coding algorithm developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Methods:
Data from 4 waves of the Kids' Inpatient Database and annual discharge data from North Carolina were used to determ...
In 1993, the National Research Council (NRC) released the report, Understanding Child Abuse and Neglect, which highlighted child maltreatment as a devastating social problem in America. The report noted that abuse and neglect were the cause of thousands of child deaths each year, and research in the field of child maltreatment was relatively undeve...
In cases of suspected child sexual abuse (CSA) some professionals routinely recommend multiple interviews by the same interviewer because any additional details provided might improve decision-making and increase perpetrator convictions. We analyzed alternative policies about child interviewing to estimate the probability that a policy of all child...
Studies have consistently demonstrated a lack of agreement between youth and parent reports regarding youth-witnessed violence (YWV). However, little empirical investigation has been conducted on the correlates of disagreement. Concordance between youth and parents about YWV was examined in 766 parent-youth dyads from the Longitudinal Studies of Ch...
Objective:
Evaluate the rate of, and risk factors for, abusive head trauma (AHT) among infants born to military families and compare with civilian population rates.
Methods:
Electronic International Classification of Diseases data from the US Department of Defense (DoD) Birth and Infant Health Registry were used to identify infants born to milit...
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Importance
Child maltreatment and other adverse childhood experiences, especially when recent and ongoing, affect adolescent health. Efforts to intervene and prevent adverse childhood exposures should begin early in life but continue throughout childhood and adolescence. Objectives
To examine the relationship between previous adverse childhood ex...
Objective:
Studies have consistently demonstrated a lack of agreement between youth and parent reports regarding youth-witnessed violence. However, little is known about whether disagreement is associated with poorer outcomes and less utilization of mental health services. The purpose of the current study was to examine disagreement among youth an...
Objective:
The present study applied person-centered data analytic techniques to identify groups of youth with allegations for combinations of maltreatment types during preschool, early and late childhood.
Method:
Latent Class Analyses were conducted using officially reported child maltreatment data for five types of maltreatment (i.e., failure-...
A robust literature links childhood sexual abuse (CSA) to later substance use and sexual risk behavior; yet, relatively little empirical attention has been devoted to identifying the mechanisms linking CSA to risky behavior among youth, with even less work examining such processes in boys. With the aim of addressing this gap in the literature, the...
Few studies have explored the impact of different types of neglect on children's development. Measures of cognition, language, behavior, and parenting stress were used to explore differences between children experiencing various forms of neglect, as well as to compare children with and without a history of early neglect.
Children, ages 3 to 10 year...
The current study is a longitudinal investigation of unobserved heterogeneity in the developmental trajectories of problem behaviors among children who have experienced maltreatment. The goal of this study is to inform effective intervention plans with respect to behavior problems of maltreated children by examining the different trajectories of be...
Promoting safe, stable, and nurturing relationships has become the prime objective of many child abuse prevention programs. Defining and measuring child physical and sexual abuse is easier, in some ways, than this more global framework for healthy families. Neglect and psychological violence are important components of this construct as are positiv...
Child maltreatment is a key risk factor for violent behavior in youth. Although neglect is the most prevalent form of childhood maltreatment, its contribution to development of violence is unclear, as is the potential mediating role of social bonds. This study assesses the relationship between childhood neglect before age 8 and the development of e...
Spanking is common in the United States but less common in many European countries in which it has been outlawed. Being spanked has been associated with child abuse victimization, poor self-esteem, impaired parent–child relationships, and child and adult mental health, substance abuse, and behavioral consequences. Being spanked as a child has also...
This study aimed to empirically assess psychometric properties of a multi-dimensional youth self-report measure of neglectful behavior by parents.
Data were gathered from 593 12-year-old youth participating in the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) consortium; 272 also had data at age 14. Youth responded to a 25-item measure...
Trustworthy guidance spanning every aspect of adolescent health care. Unlike other adolescent medicine references, the all-new AAP Textbook of Adolescent Care is an action-oriented working tool expressly built for efficient, on-target clinical problem-solving. Broad scope - Nearly 200 chapters cover physical growth and development, examination and...
We examined the data on the use of corporal punishment by
parents from four cross-sectional population surveys in the US between 1975. There was an overall decline in the spanking and slapping of
children. Between 1975 and 2002, 18 per cent fewer children were
slapped or spanked by caregivers. Caregivers were asked if
they had ‘beat up their child,...
Witnessed violence has significant negative consequences for youth behavior and mental health. However, many findings on the impact of witnessed violence have been based on a single informant. There is a general lack of consistency between caregiver and youth reports on both witnessed violence and behavioral problems. This study included data from...
Although the history of recognition of child abuse in Europe and North America extends over 40 years, recognition and data are lacking in other parts of the world. Cultural differences in child-rearing complicate cross-cultural studies of abuse.
To ascertain rates of harsh and less-harsh parenting behavior in population-based samples.
We used paral...
Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been associated with HIV/AIDS risk behavior; however, much of this work is retrospective and focuses on women. The current study used semi-parametric mixture modeling with youth (n = 844; 48.8% boys) from the Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect (LONGSCAN) to examine the link between trajectories of CSA (...
The current study investigated concurrent and longitudinal mediated and mediated moderation pathways among maltreatment, self-perception (i.e., loneliness and self-esteem), social support, and internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. For both genders, early childhood maltreatment (i.e., ages 0-6) was related directly to internalizing and...
Unexplained gastrointestinal symptoms are more common in adults who recall abuse as a child; however, data available on children are limited. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of childhood maltreatment and early development of gastrointestinal symptoms and whether this relation was mediated by psychological distress.
Data wer...
Background. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a global perspective on corporal punishment by examining differences between mothers' and fathers' use of corporal punishment with daughters and sons in nine countries. Methods. Interviews were conducted with 1398 mothers, 1146 fathers, and 1417 children (age range = 7 to 10 years) in China,...
Each year infants die or are permanently disabled at the hands of their caregivers by abusive head trauma, more commonly known as Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS). Current medical research confirms the central role of infant crying in triggering shaking by caregivers; anecdotally, inconsolable crying is the most common explanation given by abusers. Altho...
Background/Purpose: Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is a serious form of child abuse and the most frequent cause of death from trauma in children under two. Use of universal primary prevention during the postpartum period is becoming common. This study describes current practices in Shaken Baby Syndrome education and estimates the percentage of parents...
Child maltreatment is a problem that has longer recognition in the northern hemisphere and in high-income countries. Recent work has highlighted the nearly universal nature of the problem in other countries but demonstrated the lack of comparability of studies because of the variations in definitions and measures used. The International Society for...
To gain consensus among an ethnically and linguistically diverse group of international child protection experts on the structure and content of a new survey tool for retrospective measurement of child abuse, and to determine the performance of the instrument through an international field trial with young adults.
The questionnaire was developed th...
Objective:
Child maltreatment is a problem that has longer recognition in the northern hemisphere and in high-income countries. Recent work has highlighted the nearly universal nature of the problem in other countries but demonstrated the lack of comparability of studies because of the variations in definitions and measures used. The International...
The World Report on Children and Violence, (Pinheiro, 2006) was produced at the request of the UN Secretary General and the UN General Assembly. This report recommended improvement in research on child abuse. ISPCAN representatives took this charge and developed 3 new instruments. We describe this background and introduce three new measures designe...
To develop a child victimization survey among a diverse group of child protection experts and examine the performance of the instrument through a set of international pilot studies.
The initial draft of the instrument was developed after input from scientists and practitioners representing 40 countries. Volunteers from the larger group of scientist...
The behavioral ratings of preschoolers who sustained traumatic brain injury (TBI) prior to the age of 2 years and a typically developing group were compared; predictors of behavioral functioning were examined.
Eighty-two 3-year-olds comprised mild TBI (n = 31), moderate/severe TBI (n = 20), and typically developing (n = 31) groups, with Child Behav...
The relationship between adverse childhood exposures and poor health, illness, and somatic complaints at age 12 was examined.
LONGSCAN (Consortium for Longitudinal Studies of Child Abuse and Neglect) tracks a group of children with variable risk for maltreatment. Of the participating child-caregiver dyads, 805 completed an interview when the child...
To determine the prevalence of intimate partner violence (defined as any physical violence during the last 12 months or previously) among mothers who maltreat their children, and to examine whether mothers' experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV) are associated with repeated reports (rereports) of children to Child Protective Services (CPS)...
The legal and social sequelae of interpreting genital findings as indicative of sexual abuse are significant. While the absence of genital trauma does not rule out sexual abuse, the physical examination can identify genital findings compatible with sexual abuse.
To determine the diagnostic utility of the genital examination in prepubertal girls for...
Previous studies have shown an association between spanking and child physical abuse. However, the relationship between more frequent and severe corporal punishment and abuse remains unknown. The objective of this study was to examine the associations between reported spanking, spanking frequency, or spanking with an object and the odds of physical...
This study examined the association between partner psychological abuse and child maltreatment perpetration.
This cross-sectional study examined a population-based sample of mothers with children aged 0-17 years in North and South Carolina (n=1,149). Mothers were asked about the occurrence of potentially neglectful or abusive behaviors toward their...
The most common service provided to parents involved with Child Protective Services (CPS) is parenting training. Nevertheless, most of the programs currently in use with CPS families lack empirical research documenting the effect of parenting training. Moreover, studies of these programs lack observational data with independent reports about change...
Children are overrepresented in households with intimate-partner violence (IPV), and many suffer the double burden of being
the subject of maltreatment and bearing the consequences of abuse to their mothers. Despite this situation, little information
exists concerning parenting by women who have been abused by an intimate partner. We examine the re...