Multicentre cluster randomised controlled trial evaluating implementation of a fire prevention Injury Prevention
Toity Deave1, Elizabeth Towner, Elaine McColl
1Centre for Child & Adolescent Health, Health & Life Sciences, University of the West of England Bristol, Oakfield House, Oakfield Grove, Bristol BS8 2BN, UK. toity.deave@uwe.ac.uk.
Insights
This study evaluated a fire prevention intervention in UK children's centres, finding it effective in promoting fire safety plans. The intervention aims to reduce fire-related injuries in disadvantaged communities.
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Injury Prevention
- Pediatrics
Background:
- The UK has high child fire-related injury fatality rates, disproportionately affecting disadvantaged populations.
- Children's centres offer home safety services, but their effectiveness in injury prevention is unevaluated.
- A fire prevention intervention, including an Injury Prevention Briefing (IPB) and facilitation package, was developed for children's centres.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a fire prevention intervention delivered through UK children's centres.
- To assess the impact of the Injury Prevention Briefing (IPB) with and without a facilitation package on fire safety behaviors.
- To determine the generalizability of findings to disadvantaged areas and other injury prevention interventions.
Main Methods:
- Pragmatic, multicentre cluster randomised controlled trial in four English study centres.
- Children's centres in disadvantaged areas randomised into three arms: IPB with facilitation, IPB alone, or usual care (control).
- Primary outcome: proportion of families with a fire escape plan; secondary outcomes include cost-effectiveness and other fire safety behaviors.
Main Results:
- The study protocol outlines the methodology for evaluating the fire prevention intervention.
- Statistical power calculations indicate the required number of centres and families to detect a 20% difference in fire escape plans.
- Secondary outcome measures include cost-effectiveness and implementation factors.
Conclusions:
- This is the first trial to develop and evaluate a fire prevention intervention for UK children's centres.
- Findings are expected to be generalizable to children's centres in disadvantaged areas.
- The intervention may inform similar strategies for preventing other types of childhood injuries.
Background:
The UK has one of the highest fatality rates for deaths from fire-related injuries in children aged 0-14 years; these injuries have the steepest social gradient of all injuries in the UK. Children's centres provide children under five years old and their families with a range of services and information, including home safety, but their effectiveness in promoting injury prevention has yet to be evaluated. We developed a fire prevention intervention for use in children's centres comprising an Injury Prevention Briefing (IPB) which provides evidence on what works and best practice from those running injury prevention programmes, and a facilitation package to support implementation of the IPB. This protocol describes the design and methods of a trial evaluating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the IPB and facilitation package in promoting fire prevention.
Methods/Design:
Pragmatic, multicentre cluster randomised controlled trial, with a nested qualitative study, in four study centres in England. Children's centres in the most disadvantaged areas will be eligible to participate and will be randomised to one of three treatment arms comprising: IPB with facilitation package; IPB with no facilitation package; usual care (control). The primary outcome measure will be the proportion of families who have a fire escape plan at follow-up. Eleven children's centres per arm are required to detect an absolute difference in the percentage of families with a fire escape plan of 20% in either of the two intervention arms compared with the control arm, with 80% power and a 5% significance level (2-sided), an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.05 and assuming outcomes are assessed on 20 families per children's centre. Secondary outcomes include the assessment of the cost-effectiveness of the intervention, other fire safety behaviours and factors associated with degree of implementation of the IPB.
Discussion:
This will be the first trial to develop and evaluate a fire prevention intervention for use in children's centres in the UK. Its findings will be generalisable to children's centres in the most disadvantaged areas of the UK and may also be generalisable to similar interventions to prevent other types of injury.
Trial Registration:
http://NCT01452191 (date of registration: 13/10/2011).
