Injury Prevention articles from March 2002

Injury Prevention archives from March 2002

Evaluation and other issues: Evaluation, bones of contention, Injury Prevention Online, how to annoy an editor, and board changes. (Editorial).(Editorial)
March 1, 2002... EVALUATION AGAIN: THINK BIG For many, "evaluation" is a feared word. It may be as intimidating for researchers as it is for those responsible for programs. The threat it conveys reflects the difficulty in doing scientifically respectable...

Influence of free trade on the politics of safety: Why injury prevention is essentially political. (Guest Editorial).
March 1, 2002... When advocating for prevention strategies, public health professionals need to recognize who the stakeholders are and the conflicting values they bring to negotiations. In politics, deals are struck and decisions are made, dependent upon the...

Statistical and design issues in studies of groups: Accounting for within-group correlation. (Comentary).
March 1, 2002... In the current issue of Injury Prevention, there are two studies of groups. Ozanne-Smith and colleagues studied the impact of an educational injury prevention program on two communities in Australia, (1) and Lindquist et al conducted a similar...

Evaluating injury prevention interventions: Evaluating what works is essential in efforts to prevent injuries. (Commentary).
March 1, 2002... Two papers, one from Sweden' and one from Australia, (2) in this issue describe evaluations of injury prevention interventions. In both, multimodal community based interventions were implemented in defined geographic areas. Both face the...

Education versus environmental countermeasures: is it really an either-or proposition? (Bones of Contention).
March 1, 2002... An important debate arose repeatedly during a recent interdisciplinary, international child pedestrian safety conference concerning the relative value of pedestrian education and skills training versus engineering modifications. (1) Health...

People in the news. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Ann Brown resigned on 1 November 2001 as Chairman and Commissioner of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) after more than seven years at the helm of the agency. The longest serving Chairman in the CPSC's history, Brown was...

European Child Safety Alliance. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... On the anniversary of the signing of the UN convention on the Rights of the Child in November 2001, the European Child Safety Alliance was officially launched at a press conference in Brussels. The alliance is a platform for European...

Revised NHTSA booster recommendation. (News and Notes).(National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... In November, the US government agency, NHTSA, issued a revised booster seat recommendation. It now says that all children who have outgrown child safety seats should be properly restrained in booster seats until they are at least 8 years old,...

CIPCC project. (News and Notes).(Canadian Injury Prevention and Control Curriculum )(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The Canadian Injury Prevention and Control Curriculum (CIPCC) project, funded by Health Canada and administered by the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research and Plan-it Safe: Child & Youth Injury Prevention Centre, has developed a...

New Product Safety Directive. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... In October, the European Parliament endorsed the revised Directive on General Product Safety. David Byrne, European Union Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection, welcomed their action, claiming that the new directive will make...

Bike helmet legislation. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The Alberta Legislature has passed a bill requiring all bike riders under 18 to wear a bike helmet. The legislature has taken a strong advocacy position on safety for children and teens in this province. The passage of the bill was the...

Jelly cups recalled. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Recalls of all minicup jelly products containing Konjac have been announced in Canada, Australia, and the UK. These individually packaged jellies, about the size of a single serving coffee creamer and sometimes containing a candy centre, are...

Indigenous people and family violence. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Australian Aboriginal leaders have agreed on a national plan to tackle family violence. The aim of the plan is to develop a national framework while supporting local solutions to family violence in Aboriginal communities. An audit will be...

Public Health recognition for injury in Canada. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... At its annual meeting in Saskatoon, the Canadian Public Health Association identified injury prevention and control as an additional priority for the association. It will develop a position paper on the public health approach to injury...

Call for us baby walker ban. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Joining their colleagues in Canada at last, the American Academy of Pediatrics has called for a ban on the manufacture and sale of mobile infant walkers. The Committee on Injury and Poison Prevention's policy statement can be found on the web...

Child safety in EuroNCAP. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... EuroNCAP, the European car crash test programme, has introduced a new protocol to look at how the car manufacturer protects a 6 month old and a 3 year old child. The introduction of child protection in the scheme's star rating is a big success...

Child restraint scoring. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Work in underway on both sides of the Atlantic to develop a scoring system for thc safety and usability of child restraints. The US government has published proposals in a comprehensive docket that reviews the pros and cons of using existing...

European community and "scooters". (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The European Commission has rules that, in principle, scooters have to be considered as toys, and therefore, covered by toy safety directives. Two exceptions are possible: scooters designed and marketed to be used at sporting events of for...

WISQARS 2000 estimates available. (News and Notes).(Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... National estimates for non-fatal injuries treated in US emergency departments for the year 2000 are available in WISQARS (Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System). The data are from the expanded National Electronic Injury...

Canada's Safe Kids Week. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Canada's Safe Kids Week, slated for 3-9 June 2002, will highlight sports and recreation safety, with the emphasis on fun and safety for "kids on wheels". Cycling deaths among children under 16 in Canada still number close to 30 annually, and...

Child resistant packaging. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The US CPSC is to require child resistant packaging for some common household products and cosmetics containing hydrocarbons that can poison children. Examples of household products and cosmetics covered by the new packaging regulation include...

Accurate police injury data. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Jim Nixon and Caroline Acton in Queensland have been amassing data collected from a local study of bull bar related trauma and are finding local police data very accurate indeed as far as the major injuries are concerned, contrary to what is...

AAP policy on agricultural injuries. (News and Notes).(American Academy of Pediatrics)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The October issue of Pediatrics contains a policy statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics on preventing agricultural injuries among children and adolescents. Contributors to these news and notes include Caroline Acton, Rose...

Concerns over EHLASS. (News and Notes).(European Home and Leisure Accident Surveillance System)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... ANEC, the body that coordinates consumer representation on European standards committees, is continuing to monitor developments of EHLASS, the European Home and Leisure Accident Surveillance System. ANEC has serious concerns on the future of...

AMA advice to parents of teenagers. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The American Medical Association has released new tip sheets for parents of teens on tobacco, alcohol, and violence prevention. Read the full story at www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/article/ 1987-5480.html#9. Contributors to these news and notes...

"Floating seats" are not toys. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The European Commission has rules that "floating seats" for children are learning devices, not toys. They are therefore covered by the General Product Safety Directive and cannot be designed in such a way that would lead parents and children to...

CPSC and mattress fire safety. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The US CPSC has voted to begin developing a safety standard to reduce the severity of mattress fires and to make mattresses less flammable. The new standard will address fires ignited by sources such as candles, matches, and lighters. The goal...

Docudramas in Australia. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... In Australia, docudramas are used to highlight the horrors of road crashes to school students. They are "mocked up" incident scenarios undertaken by students in grade 12 (about 17 years) in which a car is acquired from a wrecker's yard, the...

Automatic security gates. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The CPSC has alerted consumers to a tougher safety standard that should prevent children from becoming trapped in automatic security gates. These sliding or swinging gates are typically found at the entrances of residences, apartment buildings,...

Does pregnancy affect injury? (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... In June/July 2001, the national body for the (mainly) female sport of netball in Australia announced that it would be changing its rules to ban pregnant women (at whatever stage of their pregnancy) from playing the sport, full stop. It would...

Kids and aircraft. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The Federal Aviation Administration is drafting a rule mandating that children under 2 have their own seat while flying, and will have to be placed in safety seats, the agency says. That pleases the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which...

Victorian legislation: Industrial manslaughter. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The Victorian government has announced that the legislation that would enable companies to be prosecuted for workplace deaths will be introduced into parliament. Attorney General Rob Hulls and WorkCover Minister Bob Cameron said the Crimes...

Eu pedestrian safety proposals. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... In November 2001, the EU Internal Market Council supported the car industry's and the European Commission's negotiated agreement on safer car fronts. Having favoured a directive on safer car fronts in June, this change of position on the part...

Graduated driver licence program in Manitoba. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... From October 2001, Manitoba's new graduated driver licence (GDL) program has restricted all novice drivers, regardless of age, to a zero blood alcohol content when operating a motor vehicle today. The zero alcohol restriction, the first...

Farm safety reports. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The National Adolescent Farmworker Occupational Health and Safety Committee (NAFOHSAC) has published a report to be used as a planning tool in improving working conditions for adolescent farmworkers. The NAFOHSAC report, edited by Vela Acosta...

I promise program. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The aim of this initiative is to reduce car crashes attributable to novice teen drivers. The program consists of a parentteen mutual safe driving contract and a rear window decal. The decal displays a toll-free number to enable community...

Who initiative on sexual violence. (News and Notes).(World Health Organization)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... A Consultation on the Health Sector Response to Sexual Violence was organized by WHO in June 2001. It brought together experts from various sectors and regions to discuss normative guidance on the medical and legal response to persons who have...

Road safety proceedings available. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Papers from the 12th Canadian Multidisciplinary Road Safety Conference in London, Ontario in June 2001 are available on CD-ROM for $25 (Canadian). The 60 papers from within and outside of Canada include analyses of the speed dynamics of the...

Australian farm injury project. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council has awarded a four year project grant for a prospective case-control study of serious farm work related injury among males. The study will recruit 300 injured farmers with maximum...

Motor vehicle injuries. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, in collaboration with CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and the Task Force on Community Preventive Services, has released a special supplement containing systematic reviews of...

Alcohol and injury. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Alcohol is often implicatcd in injury, and a web based resource for Canadian teachers is designed to assist in teaching young teenagers about the risks of alcohol. "Your Life: Your Choice!" web site is a collection of educational resources for...

Australia and bunk beds. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The major injury mechanisms associated with bunk beds are falling (from the top bunk), head and limb entrapment and hanging by protrusions in the vicinity of the top bunk. A mandatory standard has been developed to remove from the market the...

Trade or children? (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... At the beginning of September 2001, a parliamentary question was raised by a Greek member of the European Parliament concerning the protection of children from the dangers that are created by toys or other inedibles imbedded in food. In its...

Kitchen conferences. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The Canadian Institute for Child Health is developing a series of interactive, on-line parenting resources which include safety and injury prevention, among many other topics. The "kitchen conferences" are described as a case study in...

Firearm Injury. (News and Notes).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The Firearm Injury Center at Penn (FICAP) recently received a grant from the Joyce Foundation to expand partnerships between healthcare professionals, researchers, and communities. Founded at the University of Pennsylvania in 1997, its mission...

Controlled evaluation of a community based injury prevention program in Australia. (Original Article).
March 1, 2002... Objective: To evaluate the effects of a community based, all age, all injury prevention program, the Safe Living Program, on injury risk and injury rates. Design: A quasiexperimental population based evaluation using an intervention and...

Evaluation of a child safety program based on the WHO Safe Community model. (Original Article).(World Health Organization)
March 1, 2002... Objectives: To evaluate the outcome of the World Health Organization (WHO) Safe Community model with respect to child injuries. Study design: A population based quasiexperimental design was used. Cross sectional pre-implementation and...

Influence of safety gear on parental perceptions of injury risk and tolerance for children's risk taking. (Original Article).(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 2002... Objectives: Risk compensation theory has been shown to relate to how individuals behave in areas such as traffic safety and consumer product safety. The present study examines whether risk compensation theory applies to parents' judgments about...

Adolescent injury morbidity in New Zealand, 1987-96. (Original Article).(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 2002... Objectives: Adolescents are over-represented in injury statistics. New Zealand is privileged in having a hospital discharge database allowing for analysis of non-fatal injury data at a national level. An epidemiological description of...

Risk factors for burns in children: Crowding, poverty, and poor maternal education. (Original Article).
March 1, 2002... Objective: To characterize the presentation of burns in children and risk factors associated with their occurrence in a developing country as a basis for future prevention programs. Design: Case-control study. Setting: Burn unit of the...

Effects of state helmet laws on bicycle helmet use by children and adolescents. (Original Article).
March 1, 2002... Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of state helmet laws in increasing the use of bicycle helmets by children and adolescents under age 16. Setting: United States. Methods: A cross sectional study of factors associated with the...

State level estimates of the incidence and economic burden of head injuries stemming from non-universal use of bicycle helmets. (Original Article).
March 1, 2002... Objective: To develop national and state level estimates for preventable bicycle related head injuries (BRHIs) and associated direct and indirect health costs from the failure to use bicycle helmets. Methods: Information on the...

Understanding the knowledge and attitudes of commercial drivers in Ghana regarding alcohol impaired driving. (Original Article).
March 1, 2002... Objectives: The knowledge and attitudes of commercial drivers in Ghana as regards alcohol impaired driving were investigated. This was done in order to provide information that could subsequently be used to develop antidrunk driving social...

Patterns of violence in Karachi, Pakistan. (Original Article).
March 1, 2002... Objectives: Government reports on violence in developing countries are almost universally based upon police data, which are typically incomplete and unreliable. Violence in Karachi was evaluated using ambulance service, not police, records. ...

Recreational injury and its relation to socioeconomic status among school aged children in the US. (Original Article).
March 1, 2002... Objectives: This study described epidemiologic patterns of recreational injuries among school aged children in the US and assessed the relation of these patterns to socioeconomic status. Methods: Combined data from the 1997-98 National...

The New Zealand Blood Donors' Health Study: baseline findings of a large prospective cohort study of injury. (Original Article).
March 1, 2002... Introduction: Cohort studies have contributed important scientific knowledge regarding the determinants of chronic diseases. Despite the need for etiologic investigations, this design has been infrequently used in injury prevention research....

Changes in injury mortality by intent and mechanism in Taiwan, 1975-98. (Original Article).(Statistical Data Included)
March 1, 2002... Background: Most official mortality publications do not present the mechanism of injury (for example, cut/pierce, drowning, fall, poisoning, or suffocation) for intentional injuries (for example, suicide or homicide). Objectives: To...

Setting priorities in injury prevention: the application of an incidence based cost model. (Methodologic Issues).
March 1, 2002... Objectives: To make detailed calculations on the direct medical costs of injuries in the Netherlands to support priority setting in prevention. Methods: A computerised, incidence based model for cost calculations was developed and...

Comparison of two methods for assessing injuries among preschool children. (Methodologic Issues).
March 1, 2002... Background: Most studies of injuries use health services records or recall rather than prospective methods, and there is no information on how these different methods compare. This study was aimed at comparing a report (retrospective] with a...

Development and use of a population based injury surveillance system: the All Wales Injury Surveillance System (AWISS). (Featured Programme).
March 1, 2002... This report details the development and use of a population based emergency room surveillance system in the UK. Despite some difficulties in accessing high quality data the system has stimulated a considerable number of research and...

Letter.(Brief Article)(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2002... Banning the ward "accident" I read the recent editorial in thc BMJ with interest. In my capacity as national manager of the former EHLASS programme and Portuguese representative on the EU committee for injury prevention, I agree that the...

45th Annual Proceedings. (Book Review).
March 1, 2002... Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine. (Pp x + 431; unpriced.) PO Box 4176, Barrington, IL 60011-4176, USA. ISSN 0892-6484. Professional conferences, whether national or international, serve a variety of purposes: social,...

A random digit dial telephone survey in the United States. (Splinters & Fragments).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Documents such as the 1999 IOM report on injury prevention call for increasing the public's understanding of preventability; what does the public think? A random digit dial telephone survey in the United States queried 943 adults on the...

Researchers examined five years of head injuries occuring to snowboarders and skiers at one resort area. (Splinters & Fragments).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Snowboarding is very popular in Japan. Researchers examined five years of head injuries occurring to snowboarders and skiers at one resort area. There were about half again as many snowboarding head injuries as skiing injuries. Four of the 634...

From Brazil, promising word that new strategies have resulted in fewer traffic deaths. (Splinters & Fragments).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... From Brazil, promising word that new strategies have resulted in fewer traffic deaths. In 1998, a new traffic code was introduced, with much larger fines for violations and a stepped method of penalty, ultimately resulting in the revocation of...

For the first time, the experiences of older injured drivers and pedestrians in Ireland. (Splinters & Fragments).
March 1, 2002... For the first time, the experiences of older injured drivers and pedestrians in Ireland have been documented by examining the records of patients in two trauma centers. Similar to other studies, older patients tended to be female, pedestrians,...

United States researchers found that some non-seat belt wearers became "converts" after injuries sustained in a crash. (Splinters & Fragments).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... United States researchers found that some non-seat belt wearers became "converts" after injuries sustained in a crash. Telephone interviews were conducted among patients discharged from a level I trauma center and seat belt use before and after...

A recent analysis of mortality among young men in Israel found starkly different patterns between Jews and Arabs. (Splinters & Fragments).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... A recent analysis of mortality among young men in Israel found starkly different patterns between Jews and Arabs. Ten years of mortality data were examined. Death rates reached a peak among young men ages 18-21. Although overall mortality...

Although violence and self injury are frequently addressed in the psychiatric literature. (Splinters & Fragments).
March 1, 2002... Although violence and self injury are frequently addressed in the psychiatric literature, the broader topics of physical trauma and injury are seldom broached. Happily, a 10 year review of child and adolescent injuries, and the implications for...

Another study from Brazil examined childhood injury occurrence and patterns. (Splinters & Fragments).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Another study from Brazil examined childhood injury occurrences and patterns. A retrospective survey of homes in one area of a town found 260 injuries to children in one year. Falls were the leading cause, and most injuries occurred in the...

Beyond our borders. (Splinters & Fragments).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... An aptly named article, "Beyond our borders", examines injury in developing nations, noting that injuries account for three of the leading six causes of death for children aged 5-14, and four of the leading causes for young adults aged 15-44....

Calendar.
March 1, 2002... 4th Fourth International Symposium on Safety in Ice Hockey 5-6 May 2002, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. The objective of the symposium is to review the current state of the art and science of prevention of ice hockey injuries. One session will be...