Preventing Children's Injuries Focus of Seattle Forum
An international forum on children’s health is set for Dec. 11, 2008, at the University of Washington to complement an international effort headed by the World Health Organization and UNICEF to create safer environments for children. The forum will feature the introduction of the "World Report on Child Injury Prevention," which those agencies sponsored. The Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center, a leading research organization on injury prevention and trauma research, is affiliated with the Seattle university.
The report is the result of a three-year international collaboration involving experts in pediatric injury. It proposes ways to prevent injuries caused by burns, drownings, traffic crashes, falls, and poisonings, which together cause millions of deaths and injuries among children. Injury is the leading cause of death worldwide for children younger than 18.
In September, researchers from the Harborview Center and the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published a national study that showed post-traumatic stress disorder and depression are common among patients one year after they suffer a serious injury. The study followed 2,707 injured patients from 69 hospitals across the country; 20.7 percent had post-traumatic stress disorder and 6.6 percent had depression one year after their injury. Injured patients diagnosed with PTSD or depression were six times more likely not to have returned to work in the year following the injury, according to the study, which was published in Annals of Surgery. Funding for the research was provided by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, CDC, the National Institute of Aging, and the National Institute of Mental Health.