Related Experiment Videos
Accidental injury: risk and preventative interventions
I van Weeghel1, D Kendrick, P Marsh
1Faculty of Medicine, University of Nijmegen, Sommelaan, Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
Insights
Families facing childhood injury risks actively seek home safety checks and affordable equipment. However, they are less likely to request first aid training, indicating a need for alternative methods to deliver this vital advice.
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Injury Prevention
- Child Safety
Background:
- Childhood unintentional injuries pose a significant public health concern.
- Primary care settings offer opportunities to implement injury prevention strategies.
- The Nottingham Safe at Home project aimed to assess the effectiveness of injury prevention interventions.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the relationship between risk factors for childhood unintentional injury and parental requests for specific prevention interventions.
- To identify which injury prevention interventions are most sought after by families with identified risk factors.
Main Methods:
- A controlled intervention study was conducted in 17 primary care practices in Nottingham.
- A postal questionnaire was sent to parents of 3-12 month olds (n=1124) to assess injury risk factors and intervention requests.
- Interventions included free home safety checks, low-cost safety equipment, and free first aid training.
Main Results:
- 73% of parents responded, with responders representative of the Nottingham population.
- 34% requested one intervention, 21% requested two, and 10% requested all three.
- Risk factors like socioeconomic status and ethnicity were associated with requests for home safety checks and equipment, but not first aid training.
Conclusions:
- Families with higher risks for unintentional childhood injury do request home safety checks and low-cost safety equipment.
- There is a disparity in requests for first aid training among at-risk families.
- Alternative strategies may be necessary to effectively deliver first aid advice to these families.
Objective:
To evaluate the relation between risk factors for childhood unintentional injury and requests for injury prevention interventions as part of the Nottingham Safe at Home project, a primary care based controlled intervention study assessing the effectiveness of a package of injury prevention interventions.
Setting:
17 practices in Nottingham randomly selected from 55 practices volunteering to take part in the study.
Methods:
Postal questionnaire to all parents of children aged 3 to 12 months registered with the intervention practices (n = 1124) to assess risk factors for injury and to elicit requests for three injury prevention interventions: free home safety checks, low cost safety equipment, and free first aid training.
Results:
73% of parents responded to the questionnaire. The distribution of sociodemographic variables among responders was similar to that for the population of Nottingham. One third of parents (34%) requested one intervention, 21% requested two interventions, and 10% requested three. Receipt of means tested benefits, ethnicity, and residence in a deprived area were independently associated with requesting home safety checks. Non-owner occupation, lack of access to a car, receipt of means tested benefits, ethnicity, and unemployment were independently associated with requesting low cost safety equipment. Non-owner occupants were less likely to request first aid training.
Conclusions:
Families with risk factors for childhood unintentional injury do request home safety checks and low cost safety equipment, but they are less likely to request first aid training. Other methods for providing first aid advice may be needed to reach such families.