Unintentional Injuries

Each year, more than 13,000 children and adolescents in the US die of unintentional injuries, the leading cause of death for children between 1 and 19. Lisa Deal, author of the book "The Future of Children", a report that tells us what we can do to keep our kids out of harm’s way.

Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for children. "The Future of Children" is one of the most comprehensive reviews ever published of the major public health problem posed by unintentional injuries to children. In this study Lisa Deal suggests that we move our focus away from teaching kids how to care for themselves to avoid these injuries. Instead, adults should take the responsibility and Lisa Deal tells us how.

A new report reveals that about 37 children die needlessly each day from injuries that might easily have been prevented. The three leading causes of death by injury are motor vehicle crashes, followed by drowning and pedestrian injuries.

When we put this report together we learned that we already knew a surprising amount about how to prevent some of these injuries. Many of these measures have already been tried on a state and local level and have been very successful. For example, about half of all accidental motor vehicle fatalities are teen deaths, but what seems to work in reducing this rate is graduated drivers licensure, which means that teens are older when they begin to drive, their driving hours are limited to daytime and they have more adult supervision.

Lots of communities require a pool owner to erect a three-sided fence around the pool, the fourth side being the wall of the house. This is great for protecting the neighborhood kids from falling into the pool, but what about the child who lives in the house? What prevents him from coming out the back door and going right into the pool? We know that it happens time and time again, but we need to put what we know into practice.

We need more engineering strategies of traffic calming to reduce speed and volume in neighborhood. We also need more stop signs and speed bumps.

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