emphasis on avoidable injury
Avoidable Injury Reduction Evidence Base
Preventing Accidental Injury: Priorities for Action (October 2002), the Government's Accidental Injury Task Force report includes an appendix which looks at various types of intervention and provides an assessment of effectiveness. Although it only gives a brief description of the intervention it is a useful document (particularly in early development stages of programmes and potential partnerships) and includes references. It also highlights some of the gaps in the evaluation research. Sub headings include:
|
Older People |
page 1 |
|
Road Traffic Accidents |
page 21 (including a sub section on older people) |
|
Fire |
page 28 |
|
Subjective rating scale explanation |
page 34 |
|
References |
page 35 |
The full report can be found at www.doh.gov.uk/accidents/accinjuryreport.htm
The Health Development Agency produces evidence briefings - detailed discussions of the strengths, weaknesses and gaps in evidence. They also identify future primary and secondary research needs, and discuss the implications for policy and practice. Each has a freestanding summary and are supported by the HDA Evidence Base website (www.hda-online.org.uk/evidence).
These include:
Prevention and reduction of accidental injury in children and older people
(Louise M Millward; Antony Morgan; Michael P Kelly), June 2003
This draws on a range of recent reviews to highlight measures that have the potential to prevent or reduce accidental injury, particularly concerning children and older people. Fully referenced it also considers inequalities and cost effectiveness of interventions. Gaps and inconsistencies in the evidence about accidental injury are also identified as is guidance for future research commissioning.
Sub-sections include:
- On the road
- In the home
- At Leisure
- Community prevention programmes
- Mass media and training approaches
It also looks at:
- Health and risk
- Inequalities
- Multi-disciplinary working
Link to the full document: www.hda-online.org.uk/documents/prev_accidental_injury.pdf
The Evidence Network at www.evidencenetwork.org provides
- a starting point for accessing social science research publications relevant to policy and practice
- search tools and a referral framework to enable users to pursue their enquiries
- a forum for debate and discussion of issues and problems in relation to evidence-based policy
and is
- open to users in the research community, the voluntary sector, local and central government, public agencies and commercial organisations.
Within the Evidence Network are pages on what works for children (www.whatworksforchildren.org.uk/nugget_summaries.htm).
This includes a report entitled Home visiting can substantially reduce childhood injury (www.whatworksforchildren.org.uk/online_reading/homevisiting/homevisiting_read.htm)
Which covers:
- What is home visiting
- Why is home visiting important?
- Impact Research evidence
- What are the policy and practice implications?
- How will you audit a home visiting programme?
- How will you evaluate a home visiting programme?
- Further Resources
And concludes:
- Home visiting programmes have been advocated as a means to improve the health of disadvantaged children. There is evidence that structured home visiting may reduce the risk of childhood injury.
- Home visits can reduce the risk of accidental injuries in the home by around 26%.
- Home visits may also encourage parents to reduce home hazards.
- The evidence for effectiveness of home visiting comes from studies of families with low-income and/or in high-accident areas.
- Evidence is unclear on whether the effectiveness of home visiting in reducing injuries varies when provided by professionals, semi-professionals or specially trained community volunteers
It also includes a report on ‘Traffic calming schemes reduce childhood injuries from road accidents and respond to children's own views of what is important' (www.whatworksforchildren.org.uk/docs/Nuggets/pdfs/Trafficcalming230703.pdf) which concludes:
- Child pedestrian injury - arising from road accidents - is a leading cause of accidental death
- Children in poor neighbourhoods are five times more likely to be injured by a car than those in affluent areas.
- Traffic calming is designed to control traffic in urban residential areas.
- Traffic calming schemes can reduce childhood injuries from road accidents by up to 15%.
- Introducing traffic calming to your local area is likely to be an effective measure in reducing inequalities in child health.
- Children have themselves called for safer streets in many places