Safe communities for children: insight from a pilot program for preventing unintentional injuries

This study presents insights in safety promotion of community-based intervention programs, in preventing unintentional injury among children. We modeled and used an evaluation tool to estimate the effectiveness of a community-based injury prevention program. The intervention program consisted of a five-year multidisciplinary, multi-strategic childhood safety promotion and injury prevention protocol. The purpose of the program was to set up safety awareness in ten low-income communities in Israel. This study describes the process, impact and outcome of the intervention program and includes the difficulties faced during the evaluation process, documenting the insights gained from this pilot program. The findings suggest that evaluating the program was a positive and important undertaking. Evaluating the success of the outcome in the earlier program, however, did not confirm its effectiveness. It appears there were hindrances to the progress and implementation of the program. This study gave insights into these obstacles and how we should correct them.