Injury prevention

Introduction

"Injuries and violence have been neglected from the global health agenda for many years, despite being predictable and largely preventable. Evidence from many countries shows that dramatic successes in preventing injuries and violence can be achieved through concerted efforts that involve, but are not limited to, the health sector. The international community needs to work with governments and civil society around the world to implement these proven measures and reduce the unnecessary loss of life that occurs each day as a result of injuries and violence.” From WHO: Injuries and violence: the facts.

To ensure a healthy life and promote well-being for all is the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) 3, and target 3:6 requests everyone to participate in reducing deaths due to injuries from road traffic accidents, the largest cause of injury globally.

This course is designed to help you learn how to collect information on the burden of injury in your setting, understand the causes and risk factors for injury, and develop and evaluate intervention programs relevant to your setting. This will be underpinned by the principles and characteristics of a public health approach to prevention.

The course is designed to help you: 

1. Understand the patterns and trends in the burden of injuries in different settings, and issues associated with measurement and surveillance of injury, including in information-poor settings.
2. Identify different models of injury prevention.
3. Understand the causes and risk factors associated with injury, including biomechanical factors, especially as relevant to your own setting.
4. Be aware of the scope of injury prevention and of alternative strategies and be able to consider an implementation strategy, and its evaluation to prevent injury in your setting.

This course is an Open Online Course (OOC) that was developed by Drs Abdalla Safa, Victoria Ononeze, Bhalla Kavi, and colleagues. It has been adopted from Peoples-uni and was further developed by NextGenU.org (NGU).

There are four (4) modules to complete, which include:

Module 1: Burden of Disease From Injury
Module 2: Principles and Conceptual Frameworks
Module 3: Risk Factors and Causes of Injury
Module 4: Development and Implementation of Intervention Strategies

Approximate time for completion of this course is 4 hours at an average reading rate of 144 words/minute.

Engaging with this course

• To register for this course, complete the registration form. Begin the course with Module 1. For each lesson, read the description. 
• Each lesson comprises introductory remarks. You can click on the collections of resources in each module. 
• There is a forum on each module for reflection, and you will be able to add a new topic or respond to a previous one. You may want to share your learning from this and other readings, comment on the topics from your own experience, comment on others' posts, or provide feedback on how we can improve the content and/or presentation.
• There is a final quiz to assess your understanding of some important concepts. Click on the hyperlinks to take you to these items in each topic.

Requirements to obtain the certificate 

You may browse this course for free to learn for your personal enrichment. There are no requirements.

To obtain a certificate, a learner must successfully complete:

• All reading requirements
• All discussion forums
• The final exam with a minimum of 70% and a maximum of 3 attempts and
• The self and course evaluation forms

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By  the end of this Module, you should have an understanding of the patterns and trends in the burden of injury in different settings, and of issues associated with measurement and surveillance of injury, including in information-poor settings

The Section is designed to explore:

The definition, external causes, and burden indices of injury, and the strengths and weaknesses of the various data sources that can be used in measuring them.

The components of the burden of injury including the injury pyramid, and how injury burden varies by time, place and person, and changes in injury risks over the life course, using reliable data sources.

The importance of injury surveillance, with some examples of existing injury surveillance, their strengths, weaknesses and challenges to sustainability.

This short video has been produced by the WHO Regional Office of the Western Pacific. It is a great introduction to the issue. Before you work through the resources in the link below, take a look and think if it is relevant to your situation:

You might also like to read this short editorial: Measurement is not enough for global road safety: implementation is key.

By the end of this Module, you should be able to identify different models of injury prevention.

The Module is designed to explore:

The purposes and components of various frameworks developed and used in the field of injury prevention.

The extent to which these frameworks can ensure that all potential factors and interventions are considered and whether each may fall short of guiding comprehensive prevention practice.

By the end of this Module, you should understand the causes and risk factors associated with injury, including biomechanical factors, and especially as relevant to your own setting.

The Module is designed to explore:

The various risk factors associated with a specific cause of injury in different settings.

How identifying the risk factors may help in planning potential preventive interventions, differentiating between modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors, distal and proximal factors, high-risk groups, and how influencing distal factors through the links identified in 1 can influence proximal factors.

By the end of this Module, you should be aware of the scope of injury prevention and of alternative strategies, and be able to consider an implementation strategy, and its evaluation, to prevent injury in your setting.

The Module is designed to explore:

The levels where prevention activities can be focused (primary, secondary and tertiary) and implementation (individual, community, organisational, public policy).

Examples of interventions that use education/behavior change, legislation/enforcement and technology/engineering to prevent injuries, and how to create a comprehensive injury prevention programme.

The roles of international, national, state and local level agencies and organisations and communities that can serve as resources for injury prevention.

How to locate and evaluate the best sources of information and evidence available on which to base injury prevention decisions.

How to develop evidence-based injury prevention strategies which include a description of the target population/community, the burden of injury, goals and objectives, proposed activities and implementation plan, evaluation framework and timescale and resources.

The need for a future role as advocates for injury prevention, and the need for a leadership role, including for those non-health projects that present perfect opportunities for injury prevention.

Click here to start Final Examination

Take the quiz to test your knowledge. The quiz provides automatic feedback once you have completed it.

You can earn a Certificate of Completion if you have explored the resources in each Module and passed the Quiz.