A recent article in the New York Times captures several elusive aspects of gun violence prevention efforts and the “gun culture” that exists in some places in the United States. The article, Titled “Children and Guns: the Hidden Toll” focuses on the most tragic of unintentional gun related fatalities; those that involve children shooting themselves […]
Category: children
Preventing Unintentional Ingestion of Marijuana by Children
Editor Note – The following guest blog post is by Jodi Duke, MPH. Jodi is a PhD student in the Health Systems, Management and Policy Department at the Colorado School of Public Health. Disclosure – I am a coauthor on Health Impact Assessment discussed in this post. A number of states and municipalities in the […]
Measuring child abuse trends using Google searches
Child abuse, along with many other aspects of violence and crime, is extremely difficult to accurately measure. The number of officially reported child abuse cases is just a portion of the actual number of cases in a community. And unfortunately, a significant predictor of how many official cases of child abuse are reported is the […]
Sibling as Bully
A recently published article in the journal Pediatrics titled, “Association of Sibling Aggression With Child and Adolescent Mental Health” has received a substantial amount of western media attention. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2013/06/12/peds.2012-3801.full.pdf+html The study found that children and adolescents who experienced sibling aggression in the form of physical assault, property victimization, and/or psychological aggression were more likely to […]
Malnutrition: Another form of injury that can be prevented
This week my attention was drawn to the Save the Children’s report “Food for Thought: Tackling child malnutrition to unlock potential and boost prosperity” (read more at http://www.savethechildren.org/atf/cf/%7B9def2ebe-10ae-432c-9bd0-df91d2eba74a%7D/FOOD_FOR_THOUGHT.PDF). As I read this report, I had to reassess exactly what I believed injury to be. The most basic definition of injury is damage or harm which is inflicted […]
Segway safety in the spotlight down under
The controversy-riddled state government in Queensland, Australia, has decided to allow segways to travel on footpaths, infrastructure which until now has been out of bounds to all but pedestrians and children bicyclists. Consistent with bicycle legislation, segway riders will be required to wear helmets. In addition, they must not exceed the soon-to-be mandated speed limit […]
Children at risk of thermal hazards
Readers may recall that in March I entered a post regarding hot water scalds, sharing the vivid memories I still have – 30 years later – of my cousin’s dreadful injuries. Whilst hot water remains a potential and significant source of injury to babies and small children, there are a variety of other thermal hazards which also place these vulnerable members […]
Preventing brain injuries in children playing sport
My interest in brain injuries, and most importantly the capacity to prevent them (readers may recall my blog in February regarding Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy), and injury prevention for children in particular (such as my most recent post regarding hot water scalds) was stimulated again after reading the recent publication “Mechanisms of team-sport-related brain injuries in children 5 to […]
Taking helmets seriously
Some of us take helmet wearing seriously. This is one of our granddaughters, Emma, age 5. We have had one day of spring so the pink and white bike was brought out. Please note Emma’s helmet, and, just as importantly, that which she made on her poupee (doll). Let this be a lesson to all. […]
Public Health Nurses Roles in Injury and Violence Prevention
Another contribution from Michael Watson, Nottingham. Research carried out by the National Nursing Research Unit (UK) has revealed that while health visitors deliver real benefits to patients and families, there is a need for more research and better education in order to develop the profession. This scoping study incorporated a narrative review of the research […]