For some while Langley and I have been debating whether injury prevention workers should try to prevent all injuries because (as I reason) we simply cannot predict which will be severe, or, as he argues, we need only prevent those that will be serious. After some back and forth, in a recent issue of Injury […]
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Work-related traumatic brain injury
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can occur through various mechanisms, including violence and car crashes, but the mechanism of TBI I am focusing upon today is through a work-related injury. As a wife and mother, I know that I want my husband to return from work at the end of each shift in relatively the same […]
Taking the good with the bad: bike helmet website
I recently came across a website that managed to be both impressive and depressing. The link is http://www.cycle-helmets.com/index.html I have no idea how old it is or even, precisely, who is responsible for it. What is impressive is that it includes a massive amount of data on bicycling, bike helmet use, and helmet legislation for […]
Non-suicidal self-injury: Another effective avenue of intervention?
The 10th of October is World Mental Health Day, and here in Australia a variety of activities helped ensure that mental health was openly discussed during Mental Health Week (5-12 October). As a researcher who works with adolescents, I am interested in their mental health, particularly as it can have pervasive implications for their injury prevention. […]
Pedestrian safety video worth watching
Ted Miller, editorial board member and famed for much else, kindly sent a link to an excellent youtube video that I urge you to watch. I do so because I have long cautioned that pedestrian signals can be dangerous if you assume that cars will always respect them. I plead with my friends, family, and […]
Youth and injury prevention
Today’s blog was inspired by a tragedy on our local railway earlier this week. Unfortunately a man was killed after being run over by a train while he was spraying graffiti. Unfortunately this is not the first such death, and it prompted me to trawl PubMed and ‘see what is out there’. Researchers, practitioners and […]
Different questions for more answers?
This week I have been pondering the larger issue. You may wonder what brought this on? I live in Queensland, the Australian state with the dubious title of ‘skin cancer capital of the world’. I was a child of the 70’s. We spent hours in the sun covered in all sorts of oil that smelled […]
Medical marijuana laws associated with decreased fatal opioid overdoses in the US
Really interesting paper published by Bachhuber and colleagues recently in JAMA Internal Medicine looking at the association between medical marijuana laws and opioid analgesic overdose in US states from 1999-2010. http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1898878 They found an association between states with medical marijuana laws and decreased fatal opioid overdoses. To be exact, a 24.8% decrease in fatal opioid […]
Children and injury prevention
I read an interesting article recently, in which the authors explored the burden of sport- and exercise-related injury in children aged 14 years or less. The frequency, years lived with disability, bed-days, and direct hospital costs were explored for non-fatally injured, hospital-treated children treated in a private or public hospital in Victoria (Australia) over a seven-year period. Finch, […]
Engagement appears the key
Regular readers of the Injury Prevention blog will be well aware with my obsession with engagement. Traditionally, injury prevention – such as in road safety – focuses on the “Three E’s” of Engineering, Enforcement, and Education. I think that Engagement is the fourth, often-forgotten, essential “E”, albeit it can be very tricky to actually manage, and manage effectively. I […]