Examples of good practice from International Safe Communities Background The International Safe Community Certifying Centre (ISCCC) developed a system of peer review against seven indicators of ...international best practice in community-based injury prevention and safety promotion to increase the effectiveness of member communities. Since inception over 400 communities, with a footprint of over 100 million people, have achieved designation in accordance with these indicators. Objectives Designated Safe Communities are model community’s others can emulate as they begin their programs. The ISCCC is developing a database of examples of good practice identified by its certifiers during site visits. Examples of good practice This presentation will cover three important aspects of good practice in community-based safety promotion: 1. Formalisation of injury prevention and safety promotion in local government policy, standards and by-laws: Embedding a culture of safety in community social expectations and governance processes promotes three critical aspects of effective community-based programs, safe behaviour, environments and enforcement. (the 3E’s) 2. Democratic processes and community engagement: Citizens can take control of their own destiny by influencing public opinion, participating in advocacy groups and contributing to local social and democratic processes. Participation is a learning process that increases knowledge, thereby promoting mutual understanding, increased responsibility, and ultimately better local democracy 3. Economic incentives: Economic incentives are an effective strategy to promote good practice and empower communities to develop local programs Outcomes By making examples of good practice readily available on the ISCCC website it is hoped good practice will be further promoted among member communities and communities in preparation.
ContextDrowning mortality rate is 11.7/100,000 people per year. The rate of drowning in Bangladesh is five times compare to other LMICs. Studies show that 68% of drowning incidences occur between 9 ...a.m. and 1 p.m., while majority of incidences occurring in ponds (66 percent) and ditches (16 percent) located nearest to households. RLSS ranks Bangladesh as 5th highest among the commonwealth countries.ProcessDrowning prevention requires holistic response covering awareness, interventions delivery, and policy initiatives. Communities are ignorant about the magnitude of drowning and thus reluctant of taking initiatives. Challenges lie in achieving greater synergy among the relevant stakeholders. NADP has brought NGOs and media together energising accountability mechanisms to ensure greater impact.PurposeNADP has been designed to intervene through innovations to reduce drowning by raising drowning prevention agenda to a greater policy audience through creating mass awareness, pushing policy dialogues among multiple stakeholders.AnalysisNADP members have been instrumental in mobilising communities and local media on the drowning epidemic. Two factored advocacy, of pushing and pulling the drowning agenda that comes from community and policy actors, has facilitated multi-stakeholder engagement delivering drowning prevention interventions.OutcomesInstitutional supervision mechanism to save under 5 children and swimming teaching facilities effective 80% and 90% exists within communities. Around 50% of communities are equipped to provide First Response to drowning survivors.Learning OutcomesCommunities (80%) are aware of the adversity of drowning and prevention mechanisms. Nearly 90% of school-age children are equipped on water safety lesson.
ContextIn Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital city, motorcycle and scooter traffic is increasing, and newspapers frequently report on crashes that injure or kill motorcycle riders. Despite this, no ...detailed data on the share of motorcyclists on overall traffic is available. Furthermore, no data is collected on motorcycle helmet use, leaving policy makers without an evidence base for road safety related policy decisions.MethodsAn in-traffic naturalistic observation study was conducted in Antananarivo, Madagascar, to collect data on motorcyclists’ helmet use and to assess the share of motorcyclists on overall traffic. A traffic observation camera was set-up at one of the main roads in the city (Route Circulaire), where traffic was recorded every day for one week. The observations were carried out from 7am to 5pm. The software BORIS was used to register the observations on the video recordings.ResultsTwo-wheeled vehicles account for 23.5% of the vehicles in circulation observed, of which powered two-wheelers (PTW – scooters and motorcycles) represent 90%. Overall, 70.3% of PTW riders registered during this observation used a motorcycle helmet. But while drivers’ helmet use was relatively high (76.4%), less than half of the observed motorcycle passengers (47.7%) used a helmet.Conclusion and Learning OutcomesThis first naturalistic observation study revealed a disparity of motorcycle helmet use in Antananarivo. Road policy adjustment is necessary to increase motorcycle passenger helmet use, through educational/enforcement campaigns, or direct adjustment of traffic fines. More data collection is needed to provide a comprehensive evidence base for motorcyclists’ safety related behaviour in Madagascar.
Rip currents are the number one coastal hazard in Australia, contributing to an average of 26 people death (since 2011/12). The majority of these are due to drowning (96%) with a well-established ...relationship between rip currents, beaches, and swimming. Surf Life Saving Australia began a five-year coastal safety campaign to address rip current drowning. Phase 1 (2016–18), ‘The Facts About Rips Campaign’, increased awareness and knowledge. This phase challenged beachgoer’s understanding of rips, rip identification skills, knowledge of what to do if caught in a rip and how to swim safely at the beach. Phase 2 (2018–21) was designed to influence beachgoer behaviour and maintain awareness built in Phase 1. Phase 2 used emotive, harder hitting messaging to change safety behaviours. Using personal, real-world stories, ‘The Think Line Campaign’ introduced the concept of a line in the sand to remind swimmers to STOP. LOOK. PLAN. before entering the water. The National Coastal Safety Survey evaluated its impact on Australians each year. After its final year, final evaluations revealed The Think Line campaign is clear and resonates with the Australian population. The campaign has intrinsic value with clear messaging that communicates rip currents can be hazardous and dangerous and has the potential to change behaviour. For example, after seeing the Think Line campaign (Phase 2) components, 83% of Australian adults were more likely to swim between the red and yellow flags in the future, and to STOP. and LOOK. for rip currents prior to entering the water. This change was highest among swimmers with 96% reporting that (after the campaign) they would LOOK. for rip currents compared to only 46% that reported to always do so prior to seeing the campaign. These results show that we have an effective behaviour change tool but greater community exposure is needed for change.
ObjectiveThe development of countermeasures for preventing childhood injuries requires prioritizing injury situations to be prevented based on situation data. Conventionally, a R-Map is well known as ...a method for prioritizing injuries from the viewpoint of both frequency and severity. However, it is difficult to apply the method to a large amount of text data describing injury situations. This study proposes a situational R-Map analysis, which is a new method for prioritizing injury situations by integrating a R-Map analysis method and a text mining method.MethodsIn this study, a situational R-Map analysis was applied to the data on the ten types (e.g., bars, slides, sandboxes, and jungle gyms) of playground-equipment-related injuries that occurred in elementary schools. The data were collected by the Japan Sport Council (JSC) from schools across Japan in 2018. The authors selected playground-related cases (about 25,000 cases) from the 1 million cases.ResultsAs a result of the analysis, injury situations with high priority were found in ten types of equipment. For example, ‘failing to land and sticking his/her hand to the ground during the long jump in physical exercise classes’ was an example of sandbox-related situations with a high priority for preventing bone fractures. This result shows that the situational R-Map analysis can be used to automatically extract high-priority injury situations from big data, which is conventionally difficult to analyze manually. JSC created a brochure on injury situations and preventive measures clarified by the proposed method and disseminated it to more than 2,000 municipalities throughout Japan.
BackgroundDrowning has been identified as one of the leading cause of death specially among children after infancy in Bangladesh. Since 2003, a number of initiatives have been taken to reduce the ...drowning burden in government, non-government and other sectors. High quality research, engaging advocacy, effective networking, and high impact publications on childhood drowning prevention make Bangladesh a champion in LMICs.AimsThe objective of this paper is to highlight the efforts and achievements in addressing the childhood drowning problem in Bangladesh and showcasing successes to other countries of similar context.MethodsAn extensive literature review, both scientific articles and gray reports, was conducted to retrieve relevant information for the studyResultsA number of research works on childhood drowning prevention unveil the magnitude of the problem, it’s risk factors, possible solutions and implementation strategy. Two interventions – Anchal (community crèche) and SwimSafe (survival swimming teaching to children) were identified effective and cost-effective in preventing childhood drowning. All these interventions identified were also clearly recognized and accepted by World Health Organization and included in the World Report on drowning prevention. Drowning prevention has been included in the priority agenda in the health sector program.ConclusionsBangladesh becomes the champion in addressing childhood drowning problem. Community driven crèches for child supervision and swimming learning methods for low resource setting has been identified as effective interventions for child drowning prevention. Bangladesh also demonstrated an efficient pathway to translate the research into policy actions for a neglected public health issue like childhood drowning.Learning OutcomesAll other countries with similar contexts could follow the Bangladesh model in their own countries to save their children from unnecessary deaths from drowning.
BackgroundDrowning is one of the leading causes of unintentional death in children in Vietnam. The Vietnam Drowning Prevention project aims to reduce 20% of burden of drowning in Vietnam, this is a ...comprehensive approach program started in 8 provinces in Vietnam in 2019 and expanded to 22 provinces since 2022 that covered 47% of national burden of child drowning.MethodsDrowning data of children aged 0–15 during 2015–2019 and were collected based on death registration systems and validated by community survey. More than 600 drowning death were analyzed for both intervention and non-intervention areas.ResultsDuring 2015 – 2019 there were 600 children died because of drowning at study area. During 2018 – 2019 there were 200 cases. Child fatal drowning rates during 2015–2017 was nearly 18/100.000 children, during 2018–2019 decreased into 14.8 and 11.2/100.000 children respectively. Drowning rate among boys was twice as high as girls’ rate and it tended to increase in the period of 2016–2019. The rate of children over 6 years old was twice higher than that of children under 6 years old. Drowning rates tends to decrease in intervention areas while keeping stable trend in non-intervention areas.ConclusionsThe preliminary results show initial effects of intervention activities on drowning rates but more observation time needed to due to show clear evidence of the effectiveness.
BackgroundIn New Zealand, approximately 2000 people are admitted to hospital with major trauma annually. Following discharge, some are readmitted to hospital for a range of causes. Understanding the ...reasons behind such readmissions is important, particularly to develop/expand interventions to prevent avoidable readmissions.AimsTo describe the incidence of, and sociodemographic, injury-related and treatment-related factors predictive of hospital readmission related to: a) all-causes, b) the index trauma injury, and c) subsequent injury events in the 30 days and 12 months following discharge for major trauma patients in New Zealand.MethodsData from the New Zealand Trauma Registry (NZTR) was linked with hospital discharge data from the Ministry of Health. Hospital readmissions were examined for all patients entered into the NZTR for an injury event between 1 January and 31 December 2018.ResultsOf the cohort of 1986 people, 42% had at least one hospital readmission in the 12 months following discharge; 15% were readmitted within 30 days of discharge. Factors predictive of all-cause readmissions within 12 months included: being older, having comorbidities, the place and mechanism of the trauma injury, being admitted to an intensive care unit and length of hospital stay.ConclusionAlmost half of those admitted to hospital with major trauma are readmitted within 12 months of discharge with a range of factors associated with readmission.Learning OutcomesFactors identified in this study will be useful in considering interventions for targeted strategies to prevent future readmissions.
BackgroundInformation on the burden of drowning in Africa is limited. Existing estimates of national drowning death rates are based on small regional studies and exclude intentional, water transport, ...and flood-related drowning. We established an approach to collect nationally representative data on fatal and non-fatal drowning in Ghana.MethodsTo include the diversity of exposure to water bodies in Ghana, all 261 districts were categorized into three strata: coastal (districts with ocean coastline), inland water (districts that border or contain major lakes or rivers), or dry (districts that do not have a coastline or major lake/river but may contain small lakes/rivers, dams, wells, etc.). The three strata were sorted by urbanicity, ecological zone, and region. Districts were randomly selected from each strata using proportional to population size sampling. Fifty-two districts were randomly selected covering approximately 28% of the population. Trained data collectors identified all drowning cases in each district by contacting community health workers and gatekeepers, enabling a complete census of the included districts without visiting every household.ResultsThis approach resulted in increased case identification and more complete circumstance information than could be obtained from existing administrative sources, enabling the calculation of national estimates for drowning in Ghana.ConclusionUnique approaches can be used to collect nationally representative drowning data in settings with limited existing data. Such data are critical for the prioritization of resources.Learning outcomesLearn new approach for calculating national drowning estimates in low-resource settings. Identify characteristics of drowning in Ghana and implications for prevention.
ContextPublic rescue equipment (PRE) is installed in aquatic environments enabling bystanders to assist people in trouble in the water. However, rescuing others can be extremely dangerous, especially ...for untrained bystanders and emergency service personnel (Pearn & Franklin, 2012). In the past ten years (2012–2021) 27 people in New Zealand have drowned rescuing others (WSNZ, 2022). This collaborative project is funded by NZSAR, led by Surf Life Saving NZ with research assistance from Drowning Prevention Auckland. While aligned to the Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 11, the presentation covers all conference themes of ‘reconnecting, reinvigorating, and reimagining injury prevention’.Introduction of PRE around New Zealand has been occurring on an ad hoc basis, often resulting from a drowning, but with little evidence of best type of PRE and suitability for bystander rescue. The project aims to produce a national guide to help coastal managers make better-informed decisions about their PRE requirements.ProcessTo achieve implementation of the eventual guidelines, the project team obtained formal support, funding, and concrete methods of engagement within both the aquatic and emergency management sectors. International PRE and evaluations have been sourced and tested for ease and accuracy of use. Twenty-two locations were identified to trial PRE over the 2021–2022 New Zealand summer to monitor use of PRE.OutcomesAn in-depth research programme investigating types and use of PRE will be presented. Knowledge gained has determined the best suited PRE type and method for the various New Zealand aquatic environments. National PRE guidelines have been drafted.
