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Abstract
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... After so many years of trying to sensitize the public health community to the fact that injuries are not accidents, it seems ironic that an editorial: coauthored by Michael K. Gemmell, director of the Association of schools of public health and myself should appear in Public Health Reports with the title, The possible dream: accident prevention and injury control -- A conference to chart advances and plan strategy. In truth, injuries are not accidents. They occur all too predictably and in repetitive patterns.
The Carter Center of Emory University stated that if we apply what we know about injury prevention, motor vehicle-related injuries and their attendant costs could be reduced by seventy five percent and home-based injuries by fifty percent. Yet injury prevention is not ranked high in the hierarchy of public health priorities. I think it stems, in large part, from the common misconception that injuries are random events beyond our control. I also believe that the term "accident" reinforces that misconception and makes it difficult to convince the public that successful intervention strategies can be applied. For this reason, I prefer not to use the word "accident" when discussing injuries.
The title of our editorial was inspired by the Assistant Secretary for Health's report, "Promoting Health / Preventing Disease: objectives for the nation," which had an objective titled Accident Prevention and Control. After seeing it in print, we realize that the editorial's title was a mistake. I can assure you that we won't make that mistake again... it was an accident. It seems that all of us at sometimes have been caught.
Available:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1477797/
(term-accident-vs-injury)
Language: en |