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[Accidents in childhood. From epidemiology to prevention]
1Dipartimento di Pediatric, Università di Firenze, Italia.
Insights
Childhood accidents are a leading cause of death, but they are preventable injuries, not unpredictable events. Pediatricians are crucial in preventing these injuries by understanding their epidemiology and promoting safety.
Area of Science:
- Pediatrics
- Public Health
- Injury Prevention
Context:
- Childhood accidents remain a primary cause of mortality, excluding the first year of life.
- The term "accident" fosters a misconception of unpredictability, hindering prevention efforts.
- Pediatricians possess a unique position to address injury prevention due to their expertise.
Purpose:
- To reframe the understanding of accidents from unpredictable events to preventable injuries.
- To highlight the critical role of pediatricians in childhood injury prevention.
- To advocate for pediatricians to actively engage in studying accident epidemiology and implementing safety measures.
Summary:
- Childhood injuries are the leading cause of death in children and are preventable.
- Pediatricians should shift their perspective from viewing accidents as unavoidable to recognizing them as predictable injuries with specific epidemiological patterns.
- By embracing the role of "accidentologists," pediatricians can effectively study injury causes, apply "safety equations," and implement targeted prevention strategies.
Impact:
- Promotes a paradigm shift in viewing and managing childhood injuries.
- Empowers pediatricians with the knowledge and framework to become proactive agents in accident prevention.
- Aims to reduce childhood mortality and morbidity by fostering a data-driven, epidemiological approach to injury prevention.
Abstract:
Accidents are still the first cause of death in childhood with the exception of the first year of life. Perhaps the most important barrier in their prevention is in the term "accident" itself: the concept that an accident is an unpredictable and so unpreventable event, not an injury with a specific epidemiology that can be watched, studied, solved. The pediatrician plays, a key-role in accident's prevention: as epidemiologist, expert of growth and development, child's advocate, teacher and promoter of researchers, educational campaigns, policies. So he can no more say: "Accidents are not a medical problem"; on the contrary it is the time to know accident's epidemiology, apply the "safety equations" in the real life and be finally "accidentologists".