Sixty percent to 70% of pedestrian injuries in children under the age of 10 years are the result of the child either improperly crossing intersections or dashing out in the street between intersections. The purpose of this injury prevention research study was to evaluate a desktop virtual reality (VR) program that was designed to educate and train children to safely cross intersections. Specifically, the objectives were to determine whether children can learn pedestrian safety skills while working in a virtual environment and whether pedestrian safety learning in VR transfers to real world behavior. Following focus groups with a number of key experts, a virtual city with eight interactive intersections was developed. Ninety-five children participated in a community trial from two schools (urban and suburban). Approximately half were assigned to a control group who received an unrelated VR program, and half received the pedestrian safety VR intervention. Children were identified by group and grade by colored tags on their backpacks, and actual street crossing behavior of all children was observed 1 week before and 1 week after the interventions. There was a significant change in performance after three trials with the VR intervention. Children learned safe street crossing within the virtual environment. Learning, identified as improved street-crossing behavior, transferred to real world behavior in the suburban school children but not in the urban school. The results are discussed in relation to possibilities for future VR interventions for injury prevention.

Objectives: To examine evidence on the effectiveness of current injury prevention strategies in soccer, determine the applicability of the evidence to children and youth, and make recommendations on policy, programming, and future research. Methods: Standard systematic review methodology was modified and adopted for this review. Research questions and relevance criteria were developed a priori. Potentially relevant studies were located through electronic and hand searches. Articles were assessed for relevance and quality by two independent assessors, and the results of relevant articles were abstracted and synthesised. Results: A total of 44 potentially relevant articles from electronic (n = 37) and hand (n = 7) searches yielded four that met inclusion criteria. These four studies addressed a range of intervention strategies and varied with respect to results and quality of evidence. Conclusions: Some of the strategies look promising but lack adequate evaluation or require further research among younger players. Practice, policy, and research recommendations are provided as a result of the synthesis.

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Injury to children in Europe, resulting in both death and disability, constitutes a significant burden on individuals, families and society. Inequalities between high and low-income countries are growing. The World Health Organisation Health 2020 strategy calls for inter-sectoral collaboration to address injury in Europe and advocates the whole of government and whole of society approaches to wicked problems. In this study we explore which sectors (e.g. health, transport, education) are relevant for four domains of child safety (intentional injury, water, road and home safety). We used the organigraph methodology, originally developed to demonstrate how organizations work, to describe the governance of child safety interventions. Members of the European Child Safety Alliance, working in the field of child safety in 24 European countries, drew organigraphs of evidence-based interventions. They included the different actors involved and the processes between them. We analyzed the organigraphs by counting the actors presented and categorizing them into sectors using a pre-defined analysis framework. We received 44 organigraphs from participants in 24 countries. Twenty-seven sectors were identified across the four domains. Nine of the 27 identified sectors were classified as 'core sectors' (education, health, home affairs, justice, media, recreation, research, social/welfare services and consumers). This study reveals the multi-sectoral nature of child safety in practice. It provides information for stakeholders working in child safety to help them implement inter-sectoral child safety interventions taking a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to health governance.