Child and adolescent injury prevention

Abstract

More than 875,000 children die from preventable injuries annually. Developing effective interventions to prevent child and adolescent injuries remains a major challenge for the field. A number of intervention strategies such as the use of helmets, seat-belts, and pool fences, have been shown to be effective at preventing injury-related deaths in children. The objective of this study was to estimate the potential reductions in injury-related child mortality that can be achieved through the implementation of a select group of existing interventions. A review of the literature on intervention strategies applicable to childhood unintentional injuries was conducted. Data on intervention effectiveness were then extracted from the literature identified and applied to current estimates of injury-related child mortality. This study assumed equality of intervention effectiveness across world regions. 80 papers and reports were reviewed from which effectiveness data on twelve intervention strategies applicable to the prevention of injury among children were identified. If each of these twelve intervention strategies were implemented globally, the result may be the prevention of between 8,000 to 80,000 child deaths for each type of injury. While the urgent need to research and identify new intervention strategies for preventing injury deaths in children remains, this analysis has demonstrated that there might be tremendous benefits-up to 1,000 child lives a day, that may be realized through enhanced coverage of existing interventions which have already been tried and tested.