Advancing Injury Prevention and Trauma Care in North America and Globally

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Surveillance

Too frequently, injury control activities have been conducted without adequate assessment of their impact [6], [7]. There is a need to have ongoing data regarding the extent and characteristics of the injury problem in each country. This allows better targeting of interventions and assessment of their success or failure. Most high-income countries have well-developed surveillance systems specifically for injury, such as the Fatality Analysis Reporting System [8] for automotive deaths in the

Prevention

All too often injury prevention is misconstrued as merely admonitions to be careful. It is a scientific field like that used to control any other health problem, however, a scientific field that (1) seeks to understand the extent and characteristics of injury through surveillance and research; (2) identifies risk factors; (3) targets these risk factors through well-developed and scientifically based prevention efforts; and (4) evaluates the results of such prevention efforts so as to know which

Trauma care

The past few decades have witnessed considerable improvement in the care of injured patients. Many injuries that were previously thought of as unsurvivable now have good prognosis for survival and return to active life. These achievements are caused by several factors including technologic advances, especially in intensive care. They are also caused by improved training of doctors and nurses providing trauma care. Examples of this include the growth of trauma care as a bona fide specialty

The Essential Trauma Care Project

The EsTC Project represents an effort to set reasonable, affordable, minimum standards for trauma care services worldwide and to define the resources necessary actually to provide these services to every injured person, even in the lowest-income countries [43], [44], [45], [46]. The basic theme of the project is that considerable improvements in trauma care and its outcome can be achieved through improved organization and planning at a very low cost. This project seeks actually to catalyze such

Summary

Injury is a major global health problem. Increased attention to this problem is desperately needed. Much can be done to lower the rates of injury-related death and disability by addressing the spectrum of injury control, including surveillance, prevention, and trauma care. There is room for improvement in the application of scientifically based, proved interventions at all points in this spectrum in all countries in the world. Especially notable is the fact that there are many effective

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