On the recordSeptember 9, 2014
I want to thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for yielding. I know she has an important message to bring tonight, and I appreciate her sharing a little of her time with me. Mr. Speaker, at a recent event, I had the privilege of learning more about a remarkable organization in Winston-Salem, North Carolina--the Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. The institute was established due to the leadership and generous financial support of Richard and Judy Childress, who saw that, while trauma was taking the lives of thousands of children every year, pediatric trauma was not a focus of medical research. In 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control, pediatric trauma took the lives of 9,523 children, making it the largest cause of childhood death by a significant margin. As a comparison, cancer, heart disease, and birth defects combined take the lives of about 3,300 children every year. Tragically, 3,300 is a very similar number of children who were killed in 2010 due to traumatic injury from child abuse. An additional 6,190 children died that year from unintentional traumatic injuries. A full 52 percent of those injuries were caused by vehicle accidents, followed by drowning, poisoning, fire, guns, and falls. In addition to the nearly 10,000 fatalities, another 175,000 children were hospitalized due to injuries.
