Creating a Comprehensive Bicycle Safety Program

Abstract

Trauma centers must play a role in injury prevention. Pediatric trauma centers have the ability to create injury prevention programs targeting all children. After analyzing our trauma registry data, we determined that bicycle injuries are a significant mechanism of injury in children and developed strategies aimed at preventing such injuries. Along with support from Kohl's Cares, we are able to achieve our mission of keeping children in our community healthy and safe. Our comprehensive bicycle safety program is targeted to various ages and learning styles and aims to increase bicycle safety and helmet use among children in our region.

A Narrative Synthesis of Childhood Injury Prevention Programs for Pre-school Children

“…Emery et al [10], included two cohorts, a 3-6-year-old cohort and a 7-10 year old cohort. Schooley and Kelly [11], also included older age groups, up to 17 years as did Elwell et al [12]. Elwell et al do not specify the number of participants exposed to their multi-pronged interventions, or the number of participants of pre-school age.…”

“…Two of the studies [10,11] used a quantitative approach and the remaining paper [12] was descriptive with little evaluation. The intervention in the study conducted by Elwell et al [12], was nine age-appropriate programs focused on bicycle safety and helmet use. The project stemmed from a paediatric trauma centre where 5% of all injuries were bicycle related.…”

“…The three studies [10][11][12] described disparate interventions and methods of evaluation, although all included pre-school aged children. All three studies described injury prevention interventions in communities.…”

“…All three studies described injury prevention interventions in communities. Elwell et al [12] claim improved knowledge of children resulted from the intervention, but show little evidence of evaluation, apart from providing positive quotes from community members. Attempts to contact the authors for further information was not successful.…”

“…All of the studies lacked rigorous, convincing evidence. Elwell et al [12] acknowledge the lack of evaluation in their study and cite future plans to create an evaluation tool to measure effectiveness and to examine local and state trauma registries. Schooley and Kelly [11] and Emery et al [10] provide the most convincing results presenting evidence of statistical significance and evidence that they controlled for bias (excluding results that had parental assistance and taking care not to lead children in their answers).…”