Injury Prevention Journal: Full Text Archives

British Medical Journal (BMJ), the parent company of the Injury Prevention Journal, plans on making full-text, archived issues free to view from all of their 23 journals, including the Injury Prevention Journal within the next few months. You will be able to browse all articles over 12 months old, as well as use their folder feature, which allows you to save interesting articles and searches in a personalised folder. You can also sign up to receive new alerts. Registration for the site is required to view the articles and the process only takes a few minutes. Once you fill out the online form, you will immediately be free to search the archive as usual. You may view selected full-text archived articles now but to view the full-text of older articles may take a few months.

The Injury Prevention Journal is a great resource for injury prevention articles and up to date studies on IP methods, practice, and new data.

To register, click here.

National Public Health Week- April 2-8, 2007

National Public Health Week --- April 2--8, 2007

Since 1995, National Public Health Week has been observed each year during the first week in April. During this year's observance, April 2--8, 2007, American Public Health Association members and partners will host events throughout the United States, encouraging all persons, especially vulnerable populations, to "Take the First Step!" toward creating preparedness plans for public health threats.

In conjunction with the observance, CDC's Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response and Public Health Training Network will host a live satellite broadcast, "Pandemic Influenza: Progress in Planning and Exercising: Federal, State, and Local Perspectives," on April 5, from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EST. A panel will discuss progress in pandemic influenza planning and exercising and answer viewers' questions. The broadcast also will be available as a live webcast.

Additional information regarding the satellite broadcast is available at http://www2a.cdc.gov/phtn. Additional information on National Public Health Week is available at http:\\www.nphw.org.

Prevention Institute Text Published

The Prevention Institute is proud to announce their new text on primary prevention. Prevention is Primary: Strategies for Community Wellbeing is an academic text co-edited by Larry Cohen and Sana Chehimi of Prevention Institute along with Vivian Chavez of San Francisco State University. Prevention Is Primary aims to move future practitioners from the margins of prevention to its core by defining the elements of quality prevention efforts, identifying best practices and illustrating the application of prevention principles in a multitude of settings.

The text is largely designed for Master’s level public health, public policy and social welfare students to underscore the value and promise of prevention and to frame its practice as a key social and economic justice issue.

To preview the text and/or purchase, click here.

Training: Healthy Intimacy

Save the Date!

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Healthy Intimacy: Community Approaches to Reducing STDs, Teen Pregnancy, Intimate Violence and Substance Abuse: A Training for Adults Who Work With Youth

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

8:30 am-3:00pm

Visalia Convention Center, Room San Joaquin A, B, C

303 E. Acequia Avenue, Visalia, CA 93291

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To Register for this FREE event, call or e-mail Marsha Mauvais at (559) 733-6123 x 209, mmauvais@tularehhsa.org

AJPH: Association of the Built Environment With Physical Activity and Obesity in Older Persons

The March edition of the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) released a study entitled "Association of the Built Environment with Physical Activity and Obesity in Older Adults." The objective of this study was to examine whether older persons who live in areas that are conducive to walking are more active or less obese than those living in areas where walking is more difficult.

The researchers found that neighborhood characteristics are associated with the frequency for physical activity in older people. The smaller the blocks, the better the street connectivity and the greater the proximity to cluster destinations (restaurants, shops, and grocery stores) results in an increase in walking within the neighborhood. However, whether the frequency of walking reduces obesity prevalence is less clear.

Creating more walkable environments leads to a socially engaging atmosphere which benefits seniors as they are often at risk for social isolation. In terms of injury prevention, walking is a great exercise for older persons and is shown to help maintain functionality and independence.

To read more about the study, click here (must be a AJPH subscriber)

Online Webinar: Preventing Falls and Fractures-How and In Whom?

The Center for Injury Research and Control at the University of Pittsburgh is pleased to announce another Online Webinar Series 2007: Injury Control Research Grand Rounds. These FREE, monthly online live Webinars aim to present timely and high-quality injury control research addressing a spectrum of research topics for both intentional and unintentional injuries.

PREVENTING FALLS and FRACTURES~How and in Whom?

Monday, April 2nd, 2007

4:00 p.m. Eastern Time

Presented by:

John Campbell, MD

Professor & Consultant Physician in Geriatric Medicine

Medicine, Medical and Surgical Sciences

Dunedin School of Medicine

Auckland, New Zealand

Click here for more information

Public Health Grand Rounds

Public Health Grand Rounds will broadcast "Healthy Places Leading to Health People: Community Engagement Improves Health for All" on May 11, 2007, 2:00 - 3:00 p.m. EST. It is the 28th broadcast in a series dedicated to increasing awareness of today's public health challenges.

Registration for this series is available only on-line at our web site. This includes site registration and participant registration. We open site registration first to ensure that participants will have the option of choosing the site that is most convenient for them. Participant registration is scheduled to begin on March 21, depending upon site registration numbers. Registering your site benefits you as well as your participants. As site facilitator, you will be able to view the list of participants who have registered at your site. And participants will have the opportunity to submit questions for our panelists as well as receive continuing education credit.

If you have questions about the program or registration or if you would like to give us feedback, please contact us at (919) 843-9261 or GrandRounds@unc.edu

For more information and to register, click here

Grant Opportunity: REACH Program Improvement Strategy

Through the REACH youth initiative, Sierra Health recently awarded Program Improvement grants to eight youth-serving nonprofit organizations in the California Capital Region . These grants help organizations improve the quality of and increase participation in programs focused on youth age 10 to 15. All of the selected programs will actively engage young people and provide opportunities for leadership, team building and decision making. Learn more about REACH: Connecting Communities and Youth for a Healthy Future by clicking here

For the Spring 2007 funding cycle, the deadline for submitting an application is April 13, 2007. Click here for more information

Health Leadership Program

Informational brochures and applications for Health Leadership Class VII, which begins in the fall, will be available in early April. This six-month, intensive course is open to leaders of nonprofit organizations and public agencies whose mission is dedicated to improving health and quality of life in their Northern California communities.

The curriculum, delivered by the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development and the Marshall School of Business, is designed to develop highly skilled, motivated and effective leaders who will take what they gain from the course to their organizations and communities.

The ideal candidate:
* leads a health or social services nonprofit organization, public agency or department,
* has tenure of five years or more in an executive management role,
* supervises a team of employees throughout the scheduled Leadership program,
* works for a nonprofit organization or public agency that serves one or more counties in Sierra Health's 26-county funding region, and
* demonstrates the capacity to become a vital leader in the community.

The brochure and application, with further eligibility requirements and information about the program, will be available here.

Sierra Health's Web site. To receive the application and other announcements, join our mailing list by clicking here

Environmental Nutrition and Activity Community Tool Webforum

The Prevention Institute will hold their first national online webforum on the Environmental Nutrition and Activity Community Tool (ENACT) on Wednesday, March 28, 2007 from 11:00am-12:30 pm PST.

This web-based training will highlight an environmental approach to addressing health concerns related to nutrition and activity and will teach participants how to use ENACT as a planning and assessment tool to guide current and future nutrition and physical activity efforts.

Participants will also learn about best practices and promising approaches to addressing nutrition and activity issues at the local-level.
ENACT (http://www.preventioninstitute.org/sa/enact) is an interactive online tool designed to help communities improve their local nutrition and physical activity environments by offering a specific menu of achievable strategies in:

-Neighborhoods
-Workplaces
-Healthcare Institutions
-Daycares & Preschools
-Schools
-After-school Programs
-Government Practices

Space in the webforum is limited and will be available on a first come first serve basis, please reserve your space early! Please contact Jesse Appelman to RSVP or with any questions, jesse@preventioninstitute.org

NHTSA Calls For More Crash Tests

Last week, NHTSA, several automakers, safety advocates, and suppliers convened to talk about changes to the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), which grades new vehicles on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. NHTSA calls for more crash tests including those vehicles equipped with collision avoidance technologies and electronic stability control, which the government has proposed requiring on all new vehicles beginning in 2012. The government predicts that with the aid of electronic stability, roadway injuries and fatalities will decrease substantially. Safety groups also call for more rigorous testing for child safety seats.

To read more, click here

To learn more about NCAP, click here

Older Women Facing Intimate Partner Violence

In a recent study published in The Gerontologist, 1 in 4 women over the age of 65 have been a victim of partner violence. Of the 370 women surveyed in Washington and Idaho, about 3.5% of respondents have been abused within the last 5 years, and 2.2% within the past year. This study focused on the breadth and impact of the partner abuse on these women. The study showed that about 18% reported sexual or physical abuse and 22% were the victims of psychological abuse, including being threatened, called derogatory names or having their behavior controlled by their partner. Only 3% of respondents said that they have ever been asked by a healthcare provider about physical or psychological abuse at the hands of an intimate partner.

To read the full study, click here (must have a subscription to The Gerontologist)

To read an article written on the study, click here.

Backover Injuries-Data Collection

Every year, children are injured and killed because drivers (in some cases, parents) don't see them while backing up. Hospitals and trauma centers do not have a method for classifying these types of injuries, thus making it difficult to determine the actual number of accidents as a result of backovers. The San Francisco Injury Center (SFIC) in collaboration with various trauma centers in California, have decided to collect more detailed data. By recording backover events in an accurate manner, we will have a better representation of the actual frequency of these injuries so that we can most efficiently and effectively target our prevention efforts.

To learn more about this project, click here.

To view the SFIC Backover brochures in English, click here.

To vies the SFIC Backover brochures in Spanish, click here.

Workshop:Faith in Violence-Free Families - Building Partnerships for Change

Faith In Violence-Free Families: Building Partnerships for Change, a workshop for Faith Leaders and Domestic Violence Prevention advocates, is being held on Thursday, April 26, 2007 at the Sierra Health Foundation (1321 Garden Highway, Sacramento, CA 95833) from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. This workshop will focus on improving and strengthening relationships between faith leaders and domestic violence prevention advocates while discussing strategies to combine resources and expertise to better serve the community.

Upon completion of the workshop, participants will received an official Certificate of Completion signed by DHS. 7 contact hours of CEU for MFT/LCSW/RN also available. Registration is $20.00, which covers all meals and materials.

This workshop is held at other CA locations as well (Fresno, Oakland, San Diego, Santa Cruz, Clearlake, Quincy, LA, and Livermore). Click on the link below to find out the date and place you are interested in.

Click here for more information as well as registration.

Childhood Obesity Policy Priorities

The Public Health Law Program has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to design a national legal & policy network to promote nutrition and physical activity advocacy and aid in the prevention of childhood obesity. We need to prioritize our issues so that the network stays focused and targets only the issues that will initially have the greatest impact.

Below is a link to a survey that we want to distribute far and wide so that we can get "insider" input on how best to prioritize the issues the network should focus on. In addition to completing the survey, we kindly ask that you forward the link to as many people as possible who would be appropriate responders: e.g., advocates, academics, elected officials, public agency staff, attorneys, and others who focus on public health and/or nutrition and physical activity. The goal is to get as many responses as we can so that we make the most informed decisions possible.

To take the survey, click here. (Will take approximately 15 minutes)

March: Brain Injury Awareness Month

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, which is dedicated to helping the public learn more about brain injury and to improving the lives of persons living with brain injury. "Brain Injury: As Diverse As We Are" is the theme for this year's Brain Injury Awareness Month campaign, which will highlight the diversity of the causes of brain injuries and the persons who sustain them.

The Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA), with the support of the CDC is offering educational kits about living with Brain Injuries. The kits are avaliable at BIAA online or by telephone at 1-800-444-6443.

For more resources and information, click here.

Hearing Difficulties put Farmers at Greater Risk of Injury

The University of Iowas released a study showing that hearing loss puts farmers at a higher risk for suffering injury at work. Farmers have been shown to have one of the highest risks of hearing loss than other American workers. Farmers are also 8 times more likely to suffer a fatal occupational injury than the average American worker as well. The study determined that those farmers who had difficulty hearing normal conversation, were 80% more likely to suffer injuries as a result of a fall on the farm. It seems that wearing a hearing aid was shown to have the highest correlation to work-related injury.

This study stresses the importance of wearing hearing protection since there is often little one can do about the loud conditions on farms created by tractors, combines, livestock, etc.

Click here to read the full article.

MMWR: Rates of Hospitilization Related to TBI

In the current issue of the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report(MMWR), it reports on a study of Hospitilization rates due to Traumatic Brain Injury(TMI) spanning 9 states in 2003. The study finds that on average, TBI's are associated with an estimated 1.1 million emergency department visits, 235,000 hospitilizations, and 50,000 deaths per year.

The study finds that for all age groups, males have the highest rate of TBI hospital visits (115.1 per 1000,000) and in terms of age, persons aged >75 have the highest rates of TBI hospital visits (287.3 per 100,000). The 2 major causes of TBI-related hospitalizations were associated with unintentional Motor-Vehicle Traffic Incidents (MV-T) and unintentional falls.

The study urges an increased public awareness of TBI and the implementation of prevention measures that focus on the leading causes of TBI (falls, MV-T incidents, and assaults) to reduce the burden of TBI in the US.

To read the MMWR Report, click here.

CMA: California Health System Reform Proposals

Below is a chart comparing California's Major Health System Reform Proposals. Some of the Proposals include prevention and wellness as a key component to cost-containment. What are your thoughts on the inclusion of prevention in these plans? Conceivably, we may be looking at our future Healthcare System. Which of the 5 different proposals do YOU think would be most effective and why? Please let us know what you think!