Predictable and Preventable: Historical and Current Efforts to Improve Child Injury Prevention.

BACKGROUND: Childhood injuries are a global epidemic. Accidents resulting in childhood injury and death were first identified as a concern over a century ago. However, "accidents" leading to injury were not recognized as being predictable and preventable until more recently. OBJECTIVES: To describe the worldwide epidemic of childhood injuries, and look at international successes in the field of injury prevention. METHODS: Literature pertaining to injury prevention was reviewed to describe the history of childhood injury prevention, guiding principles of injury prevention, successful strategies for prevention, and future directions. RESULT AND CONCLUSION: Through surveillance, evidence-based injury prevention initiatives, and multi-disciplinary collaboration, we anticipate further reduction in childhood injuries.

A brief history of Forging New Frontiers, the annual conference of the Injury Free Coalition for Kids.

The Injury Free Coalition for Kids Annual Conference has contributed to the dissemination of information pertaining to the development of the field of injury prevention. A content analysis was completed using conference agendas used during the span of 2005-2015, finding that more than 398 presentations covering a wide variety of injuries have taken place. Published work has appeared in the Journal of Trauma and there has been recognition of people who have contributed to the development of the field. Forging New Frontiers is a valuable tool for attendees to exchange information about injury prevention.

Fifty Years of Modern EMS: Looking Back at the Paper That Started It All: Accidental Death and Disability still greatly influences EMS today.

For the most part EMS, despite all of its challenges, has kept up with the needs of its communities and adapted to its role as a de facto safety net. When the white paper was written, treatment for the injured varied radically from the state to state and city to city. While some may feel the white paper was not the impetus for all the changes outlines, it's difficult to argue these changes would have happened as quickly without such and influential document. We must keep its findings in mind to stay at the forefront of prehospital advancements, as opposed to reacting as a necessity of survival.

[Electropathology in Vienna, an exhibition on accident prevention]. / Die Elektropathologie in Wien - eine Sammlung zur Unfallverhütung.

Since 1906, there is, apart from the period 2000-2009, in Vienna, a collection about the processes and consequences of accidents involving electricity. The purpose of this collection is to raise awareness of the dangers, and the presentation of appropriate safety devices. Both in the case of industrial accidents and leisure accidents, the risk source of electrical power is not negligible. Due to the different vulnerable groups, the availability of prevention work is difficult. The concept of the electro-pathological collection in Vienna has taken this into account.

One hundred years of railway disasters and recent trends.

INTRODUCTION: Globally, railway transport is increasing steadily. Despite the adoption of diverse safety systems, major railway incidents continue to occur. Higher speeds and increased passenger traffic are factors that influence the risk of mass-casualty incidents and make railway crashes a reality that merits extensive planning and training. METHODS: Data on railway disasters were obtained from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED), which maintains the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT). This descriptive study consists of 529 railway disasters (≥10 killed and/or ≥100 non- fatally injured) from 1910 through 2009. RESULTS: The number of railway disasters, people killed, and non-fatally injured, has increased throughout the last hundred years-particularly during the last four decades (1970-2009), when 88% of all disasters occurred. In the mid-20th century, a shift occurred, resulting in more people being non-fatally injured than fatally injured. During 1970-2009, 74% of all railway disasters occurred in Asia, Africa, and South and Central America, combined. The remaining 26% occurred in Europe, North America, and Oceania, combined. Since 1980, railway disasters have increased, especially in Asia and Africa, while Europe has had a decrease in railway disasters. The number killed per disaster (1970-2009) was highest in Africa (n = 55), followed by South and Central America (n = 47), and Asia (n = 44). The rate was lowest in North America (n = 10) and Europe (n = 29). On average, the number of non-fatal injuries per disaster was two to three times the number of fatalities, however, in the African countries (except South Africa) the relation was closer to 1:1, which correlates to the relation found in more developed countries during the mid-20th century. The total losses (non-fatally and fatally injured) per disaster has shown a slight decreasing trend. CONCLUSIONS: Despite extensive crash avoidance and injury reduction safety systems, railway crashes occur on all continents, indicating that this type of incident must be accounted for in disaster planning and training. Better developed safety, crashworthiness, and rescue resources in North America and Europe may be factors explaining why the number of crashes and losses has stabilized and why the average number of people killed per disaster is lowest on these continents.

Injury prevention and the national agenda-can we make america injury free?

The development of pediatric surgery as a specialty has its roots in disaster medicine. In recent years, the medical community and population at large have begun to acknowledge injury prevention as a public health priority. Domestic terrorist attacks and natural catastrophes over the last decade have highlighted the need for disaster preparedness. Recognition of the unique problems that the pediatric-age population can encounter in a natural or manmade disaster situation has exposed a new facet of injury prevention. Recounting the history of pediatric trauma care and identifying current efforts for injury prevention are essential toward achieving an injury-free America.

The syndrome of accident proneness (Unfallneigung): why psychiatrists did not adopt and medicalize it.

In the World War I period, psychologists in Britain and Germany independently and simultaneously originated the idea of accident proneness (Unfallneigung). This distinctive syndrome of suffering a series of accidents was logically attractive for psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, especially as a pattern of unconsciously motivated deviant and self-destructive behaviour. Yet except for some mid-twentieth-century interest by psychosomatics specialists, psychiatrists did not systematically embrace the syndrome except occasionally as a symptom of other psychiatric conditions, thus showing that there were limits to the extent to which twentieth-century psychiatrists would medicalize patterns of behaviour.

Ambiente psicosocial y salud de los trabajadores / Psychosocial setting and workers´health

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[Leopold Berchtold (1759-1809) and the beginning of industrial hygiene and accident prevention]. / Leopold Berchtold (1759-1809) und die Anfänge der Berufshygiene und Unfallverhütung.

From the background of the spirit of occidental enlightenment with its specific rationalism and the love to human nature, especially to the common people, emerged Leopold Graf Berchtold with his scientific and philanthropic thrivings. He was born in 1759 in South Bohemia as the son of a well-to-do family from the country gentry. Thus he could afford to make large travels on which he acquired knowledge in medicine, hygiene, social medicine and the various kinds of social medicine, at that time still in its very beginnings. Testimony of this is given by many of his writings, e.g. the "Table of Warnings from Health Dangers for Craftsmen of various Trades". Like many a scholar of his era, he was occupied with the salvation of the seemingly dead. Berchtold, though, in his philanthropic-mindedness, did not content himself with literary efforts. For not only did he open two infirmaries and a smaller hospital in his native place, where any person in need was accepted without consideration of his social status; but also, disregarding his family's protest, did he change his own castle into a hospital. A cloth factory in the vicinity of the castle (which was closed again later on) gave the people the possibility to earn their own living. The consideration of safety provisions for workers, as well as taking into account hygienic measures were serious efforts that deserved to be taken as well. Due to all these efforts he made for the well-being of the people under his protection, he was called "philanthropist" and "Howard of Western salves".