The Stockholm County programmes for accident and alcohol prevention and injury surveillance--initial experiences

A comprehensive programme for accident prevention and injury surveillance was established in Stockholm County in 1988. Its main objective is to reduce the morbidity and mortality of unintentional injuries by 25% by the year 2000, and by more than 25% in the high-incidence groups. An accident prevention unit has been assigned to task of planning and implementing an accident prevention programme, while a programme for prevention of alcohol-related problems was set up later. An injury epidemiological unit at the Karolinska Hospital is responsible for coordinating injury surveillance, which is an important contribution for monitoring and evaluation of the prevention programmes. On injured patients information about type of injury, extent of injury, place, activity, injury mechanism, external cause of injury, treatment and other items is entered on a special registration form. In (10%) of 11,327 injury events alcohol was considered by the physician to be a main or contributory cause of the injury, with a predominance among males. An act of violence was approximately three times as common among males and five times as common among females with alcohol involvement than among cases without alcohol involvement. The injury surveillance can be an important means for evaluation of programmes for prevention of injuries and alcohol-related events.