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Boosting Child Safety IQ to Keep Kids Safe
By Sandy Nipper, Child Safety Program Coordinator
The Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel
The job of protecting a child from injury is probably one of a parent’s or caregiver’s most anxiety-provoking and sometimes overwhelming responsibilities. There’s good news and bad news to report. Let’s start with the bad and move as quickly as possible to the good.
As well meaning as we all are, the current child injury statistics are disturbing. Throughout childhood, unintended injury remains the number one cause of death and disability, surpassing the next nine causes of death combined. About six million injured children in 2007 were admitted to hospital emergency departments; 120,000 children were permanently disabled. Compounding the suffering of children, families and the community is the reality that thousands of those injures might have been prevented.
A closer look at the problem reveals other sobering realities. The National Academy of Sciences describes injury as “the most unrecognized major public health problem facing the nation today.” About half of parents polled in a 2008 survey did not know that unintended injury poses the greatest threat to their child’s wellbeing. “If a disease were killing our children in the proportions that injuries are, people would be outraged and demand that this killer be stopped,” says Dr. C. Everett Koop, former U.S. Surgeon General.
That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news, best stated by Dr. Matilda McIntyre, American Academy of Pediatrics: “Injury prevention has the greatest potential of all measures to reduce childhood morbidity and mortality.” The injury prevention field has come into its own over the past 20 years. During that time, rigorous scientific research has helped to save thousands of young lives, reaching an amazing 45 percent of the children who might otherwise have been lost.
To help us understand and combat the epidemic of child injury, this same research reveals a sizeable gap between what parents and child caregivers know about child safety and what we need to know to further reduce our children’s risk of injury. More lives could be saved if we could find ways to boost our Child Safety IQ.
To this end, there’s more good news for Portland/Vancouver area parents. In 2008, in an effort to expand the injury prevention capacity of its member hospitals, the National Association of Children’s Hospitals and our federal government awarded large grants to six US children’s hospitals. One such grant allowed a local children’s hospital to build a “safety store”, claimed by some to be the current “best practice” approach to child injury prevention.
Just six months old, The Safety Store at The Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel in north Portland is all about keeping kids safe by providing child safety information and lower cost safety products. The Safety Store is one of 20 similar safety resource centers located in children’s hospitals across the nation. We all sell a wide variety of safety products, but our specialty is education.
Our main mission is to boost our Child Safety IQ! The Emanuel store features a simulated home-like setting which provides interactive, hands-on educational opportunities:
• To locate and identify common household hazards;
• To demonstrate products such as stair gates, window guards and cabinet latches; and
• For visitors to practice with those products on the stairs, a tub, windows, doors, cabinets and appliances.
We keep a pulse on the latest research and studies and will print and post the most relevant. Recently we started encouraging families to go online to read one of the most promising new, user-friendly, child injury prevention resources published by Safe Kids USA entitled, “Raising Safe Kids: One Stage at a Time.” Visit www.safekids.org/stages to view this information.
Safe Kids writes in their Executive Summary, “As infants and children go through a series of developmental stages, their different behavioral, cognitive and physical capabilities can put them at increased risk for injury. In an environment designed for adults, children have a poor understanding of risks and danger. Their natural curiosity and restricted ability to handle more than one stimulus at a time make them unable to make an informed choice about their safety. However, there are many things a parent and caregiver can do to prevent a child from being injured.”
This report is loaded with extremely valuable information. If you’re short on time, turn to the pages in the report that summarize the injury prevention steps to take for your child’s developmental stage. So valuable do we find this resource that we greet every visitor to the store with the appropriate “Raising Safe Kids: One Stage at a Time” summary sheet. Check it out and let us know what you think!
The 411 on Legacy’s Safety Store
Located just inside the Emanuel Atrium entrance at The Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel, 501 N Gantenbein Ave.; 503-413-4600
Open to the public Monday through Thursday, 9 am to noon (call ahead as times are subject to change)
If you have questions, contact Sandy Nipper, Child Safety Program Coordinator, at 503-413-4443 or snipper@lhs.org
