Injury as disease

Consideration of injury as disease is an arbitrary distinction that nonetheless may have some utility. The disease concept includes the understanding that the agents and mechanisms of human/environmental interaction for injury causation are similar to those for many of the chronic diseases, with differences in the timing rather than the agent or mechanism of the transmission. As with other aspects of medical practice, injury control requires careful and knowledgeable epidemiologic, technological, psychological and social planning, and equally careful and knowledgeable attention to proper evaluation of intervention programs. Such evaluation has rarely been attempted with behavioral interventions but has been carried out somewhat more often with environmental countermeasures. Evaluation of both costs and benefits must include attention to factors that often cannot be measured in economic terms and that may differ not only in degree but in kind. Therefore, no methods for comparability may exist at this time for some of these costs and effects.