Injury prevention are efforts to prevent or reduce the severity of bodily injuries Injury or bodily injury is damage or harm caused to the structure or function of the body caused by an outside agent or force, which may be physical or chemical. Personal Injury also refers to damage caused to the reputation of another rather than physical harm to the body. A severe and life-threatening injury is referred to as a physical trauma caused by external mechanisms, such as accidents An accident is a specific, identifiable, unexpected, unusual and unintended external action which occurs in a particular time and place, without apparent or deliberate cause but with marked effects. It implies a generally negative probabilistic outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been, before they occur. Injury prevention is a component of safety Safety is the state of being "safe" , the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be considered non-desirable. This can take the form and public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals." [citation needed] It is concerned with threats to the overall health of a community based on population health, and its goal is to improve the health of the population by preventing injuries Injury or bodily injury is damage or harm caused to the structure or function of the body caused by an outside agent or force, which may be physical or chemical, and either by accident or intentional. Personal Injury also refers to damage caused to the reputation of another rather than physical harm to the body. A severe and life-threatening and hence improving quality of life The term Quality of Life used by politicians and economists to measure broader social effects of policies, such as the effect that reducing graffiti or vandalism might have on the wellbeing of local residents. Among laypersons The concept of describing something in layman’s terms has come into wide use in the English speaking world. To put something in layman’s terms is to describe a complex or technical issue using words and terms that the average individual can understand, so that they may comprehend the issue to some degree. An explicitly gender-neutral version, the term "accidental injury" is often used. However, "accidental" implies the causes of injuries are random Informally, it is typically used to denote a lack of order, or purpose, or cause[citation needed]. In addition more closely connected with the concept of entropy, there is the sense of lack of predictability in nature.[citation needed]. Researchers use the term "unintentional injury" to refer to injuries that are nonvolitional Volition or will is the cognitive process by which an individual decides on and commits to a particular course of action. It is defined as purposive striving, and is one of the primary human psychological functions . Volitional processes can be applied consciously, and they can be automatized as habits over time. Most modern conceptions of but preventable. Data from the U.S. The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the Centers for Disease Control The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services based in the Metro Atlanta area, adjacent to the campus of Emory University and northeast of downtown Atlanta. It works to protect public health and safety by providing information to enhance health decisions, and it promotes, for example, show unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death Death is the state of terminated life. The term "death" refers to both to the event of life's termination and to the state of lack of life. The true nature of the latter has for millennia been a central concern of the world's religious traditions and of philosophical enquiry. Many religions maintain faith in either some kind of afterlife from early childhood until middle adulthood. During these years, unintentional injuries account for more deaths than the next nine leading causes of death The following is a list of the causes of human deaths worldwide for the year 2002, arranged by their associated mortality rates. There were 57,029,000 deaths tabulated for that year. Some causes listed include deaths also included in more specific subordinate causes , and some causes are omitted, so the percentages do not sum to 100. According to combined.
Injury prevention strategies cover a variety of approaches, many of which are classified as falling under the “3 E’s” of injury prevention: education Education in its broadest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character, or physical ability of an individual ; and in its technical sense education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to another through institutions. Teachers, engineering Engineering is the discipline, art and profession of acquiring and applying technical, scientific and mathematical knowledge to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and processes that safely realize a desired objective or inventions. The American Engineers' Council for Professional Development has defined modifications, and enforcement Coming into force is a term that refers to the process by which legislation, or part of legislation, and treaties comes to have legal force and effect. The term is closely related to the date of this transition/enactment. Some organizations, such as Safe Kids Worldwide, have expanded the list to six E’s adding: evaluation, economic incentives and empowerment.
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Measuring effectiveness
Research in injury prevention is challenging, because the usual outcome of interest is deaths or injuries prevented, and it is nearly impossible to measure how many people did not get hurt who otherwise would have. Education efforts can be measured by changes in knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and behaviors, before and after the intervention, however tying these changes back into reductions in morbidity A disease or medical condition is an abnormal condition of an organism that impairs bodily functions, associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as invading organisms, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune diseases and mortality Mortality rate is a measure of the number of deaths in some population, scaled to the size of that population, per unit time. Mortality rate is typically expressed in units of deaths per 1000 individuals per year; thus, a mortality rate of 9.5 in a population of 100,000 would mean 950 deaths per year in that entire population. It is distinct from is often problematic.
Examining trends in morbidity and mortality in the population is usually not difficult and may provide some indication of the effectiveness of injury prevention interventions. However, this approach suffers from the potential of ecological fallacy An ecological fallacy, often called an ecological inference fallacy, is an error in the interpretation of statistical data in an ecological study, whereby inferences about the nature of specific individuals are based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which those individuals belong. This fallacy assumes that individual, where the data shows an association between an intervention and a change in the outcome, but there is actually no causal relationship.
Common types of injury prevention
Traffic and automobile safety
Traffic safety Road traffic safety aims to reduce the harm resulting from crashes of road vehicles. Harm from road traffic crashes is greater than that from all other transportation modes (air, sea, space, off-terrain, etc.) combined.[citation needed] and automobile safety Automobile safety is the study and practice of vehicle design, construction, and equipment to minimise the occurrence and consequences of automobile accidents are a major component of injury prevention because it is the leading cause of death for children A child is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority. "Child" may also describe a relationship with a parent or authority figure, or signify group membership in a clan, tribe, or religion; it and young adults into their mid 30’s. Injury prevention efforts began in the early 1960s when activist Ralph Nader Ralph Nader is an American attorney, author, lecturer, political activist, and 4-time candidate for presidency as an independent candidate for President of the United States in 2004 and 2008, and a Green Party candidate in 1996 and 2000. Areas of particular concern to Nader include consumer protection, humanitarianism, environmentalism, and, exposed the automobiles as being more dangerous than necessary with his book Unsafe at Any Speed. This led to engineering changes in the way cars are designed to allow for more crush space between the vehicle and the occupant.
Engineering: vehicle crash worthiness, seat belts, airbags, locking seat belts for child seats.
Education: promote seat belt use, discourage impaired driving, promote child safety seats.
Enforcement and enactment: passage and enforcement of primary seat belt laws, speed limits, impaired driving enforcement.
Pedestrian safety
Pedestrian safety Almost two-thirds of the 1.2 million people killed in road traffic crashes worldwide are pedestrians . Despite the magnitude of the problem, most attempts at reducing pedestrian deaths have focused solely on education and traffic regulation. However, in recent years crash engineers have begun to use design principles that have proved successful in is the focus of both epidemiological Epidemiology is the study of factors affecting the health and illness of populations, and serves as the foundation and logic of interventions made in the interest of public health and preventive medicine. It is considered a cornerstone methodology of public health research, and is highly regarded in evidence-based medicine for identifying risk and psychological Psychology is an academic and applied discipline involving the systematic, and often scientific, study of human/animal mental functions and behavior. Occasionally, in addition or opposition to employing the scientific method, it also relies on symbolic interpretation and critical analysis, although it often does so less prominently than other injury prevention research. Epidemiological studies typically focus on causes external to the individual such as traffic density, access to safe walking areas, socioeconomic status, injury rates, legislation for safety (e.g., traffic fines), or even the shape of vehicles which affects the severity of injuries resulting from a collision. Epidemiological data show children aged 1–4 are at greatest risk for injury in driveway Driveways can be decorative in ways that public roads cannot, due to their lighter traffic or the willingness of an owner to invest in their construction. Driveways are not resurfaced, snow blown or otherwise kept up by governmental bodies. They are often designed to conform to the architecture of the connected home or other building and sidewalks A sidewalk , pavement (British English, South African English and Philadelphia dialect), footpath (Australian English, Irish English, Indian English and New Zealand English), platform (chiefly Indian English) or footway (Engineering term) is a path for pedestrians that is situated alongside a road or a paved pathway (such as a concrete footpath. Children aged 5–14 are at greatest risk while attempting to cross streets.
The body of psychological research on pedestrian safety is currently much smaller than that in the epidemiological field, but is rapidly growing. Psychological pedestrian safety studies extend as far back as the mid-1980s when researchers began examining behavioral variables in children. Behavioral variables of interest include selection of crossing gaps in traffic, attention to traffic, the number of near hits or actual hits, or the routes children chose when crossing multiple streets such as while walking to school. Behavioral studies often collect such variables which imply risk of injury; e.g., children engaging in risky behaviors may be assumed to be at greater risk if actually crossing a street alone. The most common technique used in behavioral pedestrian research is the pretend road, in which a child stands some distance from the curb and watches traffic on the real road. The child then walks to the edge of the street when a crossing opportunity is chosen. Research is gradually shifting to more ecologically valid virtual reality techniques. Leading scientists in psychological pedestrian safety research are Dr. Benjamin Barton, Dr. David Schwebel and Dr. James Thomson.
Other
The following is an abbreviated topic list of some common focus areas of injury prevention efforts:
- Bicycle safety Bicycle safety is the use of practices designed to reduce risk associated with cycling. Some of this subject matter is hotly debated: for example, the discussions as to whether bicycle helmets or cyclepaths really deliver improved safety. The merits of bicycle lighting are less controversial
- Boat Boating the leisurely activity of traveling by boat typically refers to the recreational use of boats whether power boats, sail boats, or yachts , focused on the travel itself, as well as sports activities, such as fishing or waterskiing. Boating is an extremely popular activity, and there are millions of boaters worldwide and water safety
- Child passenger safety
- Consumer product safety A product recall is a request to return to the maker a batch or an entire production run of a product, usually due to the discovery of safety issues. The recall is an effort to limit liability for corporate negligence and to improve or avoid damage to publicity. Recalls are costly to a company because they often entail replacing the recalled
- Firearm safety For discussions on politics concerning firearms and gun safety, see Gun politics. For the part of a gun that is called a "safety" or 'safety catch', see Safety
- Fire Fire safety refers to precautions that are taken to prevent or reduce the likelihood of a fire that may result in death, injury, or property damage, alert those in a structure to the presence of a fire in the event one occurs, better enable those threatened by a fire to survive, or to reduce the damage caused by a fire. Fire safety measures and burn safety
- Home safety
- Impaired driving Driving under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, is the act of operating a vehicle (including bicycle, boat, airplane, wheelchair, tractor or horse) after consuming alcohol or other drugs. It is a criminal offense in most countries
- Pedestrian safety Almost two-thirds of the 1.2 million people killed in road traffic crashes worldwide are pedestrians . Despite the magnitude of the problem, most attempts at reducing pedestrian deaths have focused solely on education and traffic regulation. However, in recent years crash engineers have begun to use design principles that have proved successful in
- Poison control
- Toy safety Toy safety is the practice of ensuring that toys, especially those made for children, are safe, usually through the application of set safety standards. In many countries, commercial toys must be able to pass safety tests in order to be sold. In the U.S., some toys must meet national standards, while other toys may not have to meet a defined
- Traffic safety Road traffic safety aims to reduce the harm resulting from crashes of road vehicles. Harm from road traffic crashes is greater than that from all other transportation modes (air, sea, space, off-terrain, etc.) combined.[citation needed]
- Sports injury Sports injuries are injuries that occur to athletes in major sporting events. In many cases, these types of injuries are due to overuse of a part of the body when participating in a certain activity. For example, runner's knee is a painful condition generally associated with running, while tennis elbow is a form of repetitive stress injury at the safety
- Workplace safety The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States Department of Labor compiles information about workplace fatalities in the United States. Since 1992, the year with the most workplace fatalities was 1994 with 6,632 fatalities, and the lowest in 2002 with 5,534
Recommended reading (research journals)
- Accident Analysis and Prevention
- Injury Prevention Injury prevention are efforts to prevent or reduce the severity of bodily injuries caused by external mechanisms, such as accidents, before they occur. Injury prevention is a component of safety and public health, and its goal is to improve the health of the population by preventing injuries and hence improving quality of life. Among laypersons,
- International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion
- Journal of Safety Research
- Journal of Trauma
- Safety Science
- Traffic Injury Prevention
- Transportation Research: Traffic Psychology and Behavior
See also
- U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission is an independent agency of the United States government created in 1972 through the Consumer Product Safety Act to protect "against unreasonable risks of injuries associated with consumer products." As of 2006[update] its acting chairman is Nancy Nord, a Republican. The other
- Haddon Matrix
- Home Safety Council The Home Safety Council is the only national American nonprofit organization solely dedicated to preventing home related injuries that result in nearly 20,000 deaths and 21 million medical visits on average each year. Through national programs, partnerships and the support of volunteers, HSC educates people of all ages to be safer in and around
- National Highway Traffic Safety Administration The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is an agency of the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government, part of the Department of Transportation. It describes its mission as “Save lives, prevent injuries, reduce vehicle-related crashes.”
- National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is the United States federal agency responsible for conducting research and making recommendations for the prevention of work-related injury and illness. NIOSH is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) within the US Department of Health and Human Services
References
External links
Categories: Public health | Biostatistics | Health economics | Sociology
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Monterey County Herald
... percent of those who sustain a traumatic brain injury , die each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .
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Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:39:09 GM
Arkansas . injury. rate for children and adolescents is among the highest in the nation. But many of those injuries could be prevented through appropriate education. The . Injury Prevention. Center (IPC) at Arkansas Children s Hospital (ACH) ...
