Exploring the association between emergency hospital services and homicide incidents in Pennsylvania

Homicide is a significant measure of quality of life and serves as a reference point for a comparison between neighborhoods. Despite its unique relevance to homicide, the role of medical resources, specifically emergency hospital services, has been underexplored in the literature. This study addresses this gap by examining the relationship between emergency hospital availability and homicide rates across counties in Pennsylvania, using advanced spatiotemporal modeling techniques. While controlling for socio-economic characteristics and spatial autocorrelation, the analysis suggests that greater access to emergency hospital services is associated with lower homicide rates. These findings call for the importance of medical resources in both future homicide research and health policy.