ABSTRACT
This paper is a provisional report from an ongoing field experiment in Uppsala, Sweden, with the aim to reduce the number of serious childhood accidents. Groups of parents have been systematically trained to function as child-environment supervisors. The experiences have been very positive so far. The child-environment supervisors have proved to possess good knowledge about how to prevent accidents. A large number of hazards have been detected and successfully eliminated. The groups are now taking an active part in the planning of new housing estates. The findings also indicate that the Child Health Organization should be able to play a more active role in the work of environmental improvement for the safety of children. A suggestion for a collective strategy for such activity has been worked out.
Subject(s)
Accident Prevention , Child Health Services/statistics & numerical data , Child , Child, Preschool , Environment Design , Humans , Methods , Parents , Safety , SwedenABSTRACT
This paper describes experiences from a three-year research project concerning questions of child abuse and neglect. The emphasis is placed on an attempt to define the real difficulties that have arisen during the course of this work, e.g. group pressure, breaks in continuity, goal heterogeneity, role conflicts and differences in frames of reference. Collaboration problems must be taken seriously and deserve systematic investigation. Multidisciplinary collaboration in different connections within medical, health and social care is of particular importance at this time when the care resources are limited. At the same time it is of decisive importance that the members of the team clarify their attitudes towards certain fundamental questions.
Subject(s)
Child Abuse/prevention & control , Interprofessional Relations , Child , Child Health Services , Child Psychiatry , Child, Preschool , Humans , Pediatrics , Psychology, Child , Social Medicine , Social Work , Sweden , ViolenceABSTRACT
Road accidents in children is a health problem of major importance all over the world. Different programs of prevention have been tested. Such programs must be based on data from epidemiological studies. This paper is aimed to shed some light on the way in which basic methodological problems in epidemiological research influence the results and the possibility of drawing conclusions from them.
Subject(s)
Accidents, Traffic , Child , Accident Prevention , Accident Proneness , Humans , Mortality , Parent-Child Relations , Social Environment , SwedenABSTRACT
Three studies on childhood accidents are presented. The aim was to study the importance of different factors regarding the accidents in question. The following factors have then been taken into consideration: the enviromental hazard, the accident proneness, the supervision and the education. Methodologically the investigations were carried out with an epidemiological technique. One is of a descriptive nature and the other two more analytically oriented. The studies are based on two different 1-year-materials consisting of accidents among children recorded in the emergency departments of Ostersund Hospital and the University Hospital in Uppsala. The results indicate that risk factors in the children's physical milieu played an important role in the occurrence of the accidents: clearly identifiable risk factors in the environment could be connected with 52% of the accidents, whereas some deficiency in supervision was noted in 20%. The investigators could identify a number of specific risk factors. Attempts were made to examine how frequency and type of childhood accidents vary with the population structure and social structure in well-defined housing areas, but the results were hard to evaluate because of methodological problems. The results are presented against the background of a detailed discussion on central methodological problems in epidemiological accident research. It is pointed out in particular that epidemiological methods have clear limitations in attempts at studying the low-frequency events that each individual type of accident in fact comprises. It is of great importance that in future research, side by side with the traditional epidemiological methods, other techniques are tested with the aim of obtaining maximal usable information from a detailed study of individual accidents and their backgrounds.
