The Million Lives Campaign
Transforming injury prevention research into public policy will save lives.
- By Jerry Laws
- May 01, 2006
AT least 5 million people worldwide die from injuries each year. Two
professors in Seattle have declared a global campaign to prevent 20 percent of
those deaths, saying it is "within our grasp" to save about 1 million lives
annually. Drs. Fred Rivara and Charles Mock of the Harborview Injury Prevention
and Research Center (part of the University of Washington) published their
proposal in a December 2005 guest editorial in the journal
Injury
Prevention.
Their model was the "100,000 Lives" campaign of the Institute for Healthcare
Improvement, which asked 2,000 U.S. hospitals to reduce deaths with six
strategies, including rapid response teams to prevent cardiorespiratory arrests.
Rivara, MD, MPH, said in a Feb. 8 interview that the six interventions
recommended in their "1,000,000 lives campaign" are proven and already working
in many settings.
|
"1,000,000 lives campaign" Interventions |
|
Strategy |
Lives lost, 2000 |
Possible reduction |
Lives saved |
|
Improving trauma care |
5,000,000 |
8 % |
400,000 |
|
Preventing road traffic injuries |
1,200,000 |
25 % |
300,000 |
|
Treating depression to prevent suicide |
817,000 |
20 % |
160,000 |
|
Eliminating child labor deaths |
57,000 |
100 % |
57,000 |
|
Reducing deaths from intimate partner violence |
50,000 |
50 % |
25,000 |
|
Reducing child drowning deaths |
116,000 |
50 % |
58,000 |
|
Total |
|
|
1,000,000 |
|
Chart credit: HIPRC/INJURY
PREVENTION |
Rivara said he and Mock, who is HIPRC's director, did not rank the six
interventions according to the ease of accomplishing them. "I don't know that
these are ranked here except in order of lives that would be saved," he said. Better trauma care
around the world clearly would save many lives, he said, and the U.S. system of
protective orders does reduce intimate partner violence. He said this is an
opportune time for preventing road traffic/pedestrian deaths, as countries such
as China industrialize and realize they can learn from mistakes and successes
industrial nations have made. "In many ways, it's a chance to start over and try
to do it right," Rivara said.
He said they hope to see progress on some or all of these six items a decade
from now. "Much research for injury prevention has been done. The task right
now: Let's use what we know and apply it to save lives," Rivara ([email protected]) said to explain why
they had announced the campaign now and had called for colleagues to move beyond
research and limited intervention trials to the larger world of public
policy.
"It's clearly somewhat of a dream here," Rivara told me. "But it's a dream
that might be possible if people think about it and decide to do it."
This column appears in the May 2006 issue of Occupational Health &
Safety.
This article originally appeared in the May 2006 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.
About the Author
Jerry Laws is Editor of Occupational Health & Safety magazine, which is owned by 1105 Media Inc.