Injury Prevention Podcast

December 14, 2013, is the one year anniversary of the shootings at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newton, Connecticut, USA, in which 20 young children were massacred. Dr Fred Rivara, professor of pediatrics, University of Washington, Seattle, discusses the need for research on gun violence, and the reasons that funding for this has been blocked in the US for almost two decades. The Institute of Medicine report, Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence, is available here: bit.ly/1e9UMvj

Read the full research online: http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/19/5/311 Brian Johnston, IP editor, talks to Mathilde Sengoelge from the Department of Public Health Sciences, at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. They discuss the Editor's choice manuscript, Country-level economic disparity and child mortality related to housing and injuries: a study in 26 European countries

Brian Johnston, IP Editor in Chief, talks to Eva Shipp, from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the School of Rural Public Health in Texas, about her latest research into injury rates amongst adolescent, migrant farmworkers in Starr county, South Texas. Read the full research : http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/19/4/264.full

In Philadelphia, the local authority has undertaken a project to green vacant lots, with the aim of improving the city. Research by Charles Branas, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania, has shown that not only did this have the desired aesthetic effect, it also lead to a reduction in violent crime in those areas. He joins Brian Johnston, IP's editor in chief, to discuss his work. Read the full research: http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/19/3/198

Unintentional, non-fire-related carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is a leading cause of poisoning death and injury in the USA. Most residential poisonings are preventable, so how to get people to adopt these protective behaviours? IP editor Brian Johnston talks to Douglas Rupert, Health Communication Program, RTI International, and Scott Damon, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about what their research looking at the question revealed. See also: Risk and protective behaviours for residential carbon monoxide poisoning http://bit.ly/12FjyeH

Can emergency department data sharing help prevent violence and alcohol-related harm? Editor Brain Johnston talks to Karen Hughes (behavioural epidemiologist, Centre for Public Health, Liverpool John Moores University) about the way data is integration into multi-agency policy and practice in the North West of England, and the role this played in driving local violence prevention activity. See also: Data sharing for prevention: a case study in the development of a comprehensive emergency department injury surveillance system and its use in preventing violence and alcohol-related harms http://bit.ly/14MiFV7

IP editor Brian Johnston talks to Ciara Zachary (postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Health Behavior and Society, Johns Hopkins University) about her study looking at barriers to implementing falls prevention programmes in senior centres. See also: Barriers to senior centre implementation of falls prevention programmes http://bit.ly/XmpJ4k

Tackling inequality in health is an important part of the public policy agenda in many countries; however, many interventions that could improve overall health might also increase inequality. Robert Lu (Institute of Public Health, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan) has been tracking mortality from road traffic injuries after a mandatory motorcycle helmet law was introduced in Taiwan, and editor Brian Johnston asks him how this varied regionally and over time. See also: Reducing regional inequality in mortality from road traffic injuries through enforcement of the mandatory motorcycle helmet law in Taiwan http://bit.ly/ZMyPFj

Editor Brian Johnston talks to Laurel Austin (professor in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School) about using mental models to help prevent injuries and communicate risk. See also: Injury prevention and risk communication: a mental models approach http://bit.ly/15EaYzY

Brian Johnston, IP editor, talks to Katherine Smith, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, about her recent study examining the use by the US media of the expression ‘freak accident’ in relation to injury events. See also: ‘It was a freak accident’: an analysis of the labelling of injury events in the US press http://bit.ly/10wxFVI

Brian Johnston, Injury Prevention’s editor, talks to Jennifer Taylor from the Drexel University School of Public Health, Philadelphia, about this month’s editor’s choice. Read the article online: Triangulating case-finding tools for patient safety surveillance: a cross-sectional case study of puncture/laceration http://bit.ly/17NCd7w

Thermostatic mixer valves - which keep water delivered to the bath below a maximum temperature - can prevent scalds. But would adding them to new build houses and those undergoing a change in use be cost-effective? Ceri Phillips (Swansea University, UK) talks to IP editor Brian Johnston about what his study in Scotland revealed. See also: Preventing bath water scalds: a cost-effectiveness analysis of introducing bath thermostatic mixer valves in social housing http://bit.ly/13VzgoT

Brian Johnston, Injury Prevention’s editor, talks to Jagnoor Jagnoor from the George Institute in Australia about this month’s editor’s choice. India’s million deaths study used cross sectional verbal autopsies to take a snapshot of the main causes of deaths in India - data which are otherwise poorly reported. Jagnoor and colleagues used these data to examine cause of death due to injury in children under five, the results of which are published in Injury Prevention this month. See also: Unintentional injury deaths among children younger than 5 years of age in India: a nationally representative study http://bit.ly/17NBxPm

Although most people prefer to bicycle on facilities separated from motor traffic, as with cycle tracks, guidance in the USA has suggested that these separated facilities are more dangerous than bicycling on the road. Brian Johnston (IP editor-in-chief) asks Anne Lusk (Harvard School of Public Health) what research on this reveals. Read the brief report online: http://tinyurl.com/ot45bo7

This month’s editor’s choice reports success in using the World Health Organisation safe communities model approach to increase child restraint in motor vehicles. Brian Johnston asks lead author Greg Istre, from the Injury Prevention Center of Greater Dallas, USA, about what they achieved and the value and difficulties of the approach. See also: A controlled evaluation of the WHO Safe Communities model approach to injury prevention: increasing child restraint use in motor vehicles http://bit.ly/XTLgmb

In this month’s podcast, IP editor Brian Johnston talks to one of the authors on this month’s editor’s choice, Will Pickett, from the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada. They discuss his work using a novel method of investigating agricultural injury in Canadian farmers. See also: Determinants of agricultural injury: a novel application of population health theory http://bit.ly/17NAxLj

In this month’s podcast, IP editor Brian Johnston talks to Flaura Winston, University of Pennsylvania and Joan Ozanne-Smith, Monash University. They discuss their research into the efficacy and acceptability of an injury prevention intervention, designed for the USA, but implemented in China. See also: Cultural translation: acceptability and efficacy of a US-based injury prevention intervention in China http://bit.ly/11hp3NM

Brian Johnston, IP’s editor, talks to Mathieu Gagne, The Institut national de santé publique du Québec, about the effect firearms regulation introduced in 1991 has had on the rate of method-specific male suicide in the Canadian province. See also: Firearms regulation and declining rates of male suicide in Quebec http://bit.ly/11hp3NM

Brian Johnston, IP’s editor, talks to Isaac Kofi Yankson from the CSIR-Building and Road Research Institute, Ghana, and Beth E Ebel from the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center, University of Washington, about their look how road traffic injury and injury prevention were reported in Ghanaian newspapers. see also Reporting on road traffic injury: content analysis of injuries and prevention opportunities in Ghanaian newspapers http://bit.ly/9WZEXo

Brian Johnston, IP’s editor, talks to Flaura Winston, an associate editor with IP, about applying best practice in behavioural science to injury prevention. See also: A practical approach for applying best practices in behavioural interventions to injury prevention http://bit.ly/15F4f8H