Evaluation of intervention program for risk behaviors of unintentional injury among school age children / 中南大学学报(医学版)

ABSTRACT

To develop an intervention protocol for children's unintentional injury risk behaviors, and to evaluate the feasibility of the protocol.
 Methods: By theoretically analyzing the influential factors for children's unintentional injury risk behaviors, children's cognitive development characteristics and the social learning theory, an intervention protocol was established on the basis of changing the unintentional injury attribution and negative information transmission of risk behavior consequences. A primary school in Changsha city was selected by random cluster sampling. A community-based randomized controlled trial was conducted on the selected students once a week for 5 consecutive weeks. The scores of unintentional injury risk behavior before intervention, 3 months and 6 months after intervention, and the frequency before intervention and 6 months after intervention, were collected and compared.
 Results: A total of 194 children were included in the study 98 in the intervention group; 96 in the control group; 96 (49.5%) boys and 98 (50.5%) girls between 7 and 8 years old. The scores of unintentional injury risk behavior for children in the intervention group at 3 and 6 months after intervention were 14.42±5.67 and 14.14±8.95, respectively, lower than those before the intervention (16.85±8.48) and in the control group (P=0.001). The number of minor unintentional injuries in the intervention group decreased from 119 to 56, and the number of children suffering 2 or more injuries dropped from 34 to 10 (P<0.001) at 6 months after the intervention, while both of them were lower than that in the control group (P=0.011). Similar changes were observed in some slight or more serious unintentional injuries (P=0.030).
 Conclusion: The protocol for changing the attribution to unintentional injury and negative information transmission for risk behavior consequences was proved to effectively reduce children's unintentional injury risk behaviors and relevant events.