Achieving engagement in injury and violence prevention research

This paper examines the idea of engaged research and the ways it is conceived and applied in injury and violence prevention. To achieve meaningful engagement, I argue that efforts should be directed to relationships with the people who will be impacted by injury prevention interventions rather than to professional practitioners. Additionally, I call for researchers to avoid predefining injury problems prior to engaging with the people it is intended to affect. Prefiguring problems circumscribes the possibilities for engagement with individuals who do not value risk as a determining factor in problem definition and cuts off and devalues other ways of knowing.