New research was presented at AAP 2020, the 2020 American Academy of Pediatrics Virtual National Conference & Exhibition, from October 2-5. The features below highlight some of the studies emerging from the conference that focused on emergency medicine.
A survey of teens presenting to two urban emergency departments indicates that gender diverse youth are more likely than their cisgender peers to report risky sexual behaviors, recent depression, and smoking. Although gender diverse (gender queer, gender fluid, or transgender) adolescents were not significantly more likely than cisgender adolescents to be sexually active (13.3% vs 20.8%), those who were sexually active were significantly more likely to report alcohol or drug use before having sex (35.7% vs 4.6%) and to have not discussed sexually transmitted infections (21.4% vs 6.2%) or pregnancy prevention (78.5% vs 50.0%) with partners. Gender diverse participants were also significantly more likely to report being depressed for at least one-half of the days during the 2 weeks prior to taking the survey (25.9% vs 12.6%) and to have tried smoking (23.3% vs 9.1%). Although gender diverse youth were less likely to report being always comfortable discussing their gender identity with providers compared with cisgender youth (44.1% vs 69.4%), they were more likely to report wanting to be asked about their gender identity, just not at every visit (44.1% vs 34.8%).
