Prevention of unintentional injuries in early childhood: Using an E-health4Uth home safety intervention to promote parents’ child safety behaviours

Every day around the world the lives of more than two thousand families are torn apart by the loss of a child due to an unintentional injury [1]. Such tragedy can change lives irrevocably. It is a major public health problem that requires urgent attention. “Unintentional injury” is used to refer to injuries that were unplanned. Unintentional injuries can be defined as events in which the injury occurs in a short period of time (seconds or minutes); the harmful outcome was not sought; or the outcome was the result of one of the forms of physical energy in the environment or normal body functions being blocked by external means, e.g. drowning. The most common unintentional injuries result from motor vehicle crashes, falls, fires and burns, drowning, poisonings and aspirations [2]. Injury is a major cause of death of children (aged 0-18 years old) throughout the world, responsible for about 950.000 deaths each year [1, 3]. Unintentional injuries account for almost 90% of these deaths [1]. Unintentional injuries are also a major cause of disabilities and loss of quality of live, which can have a long-lasting impact on all facets of children’s lives, i.e. relationships, learning and play, and their parents’ lives [1, 4-6]. In the Netherlands unintentional injuries are also the greatest health problem among children [7, 8]. Each year 18 children aged 0-4 years die caused by unintentional injuries in and around the home. Additionally 41.000 children aged 0-4 years are medically treated, of which 23.000 children at the emergency room of a hospital because of unintentional injuries [9-11]. Among preschool children, toddlers have the highest risk of getting injured [1, 11]. The direct medical costs of an injury among children aged 0 to 4 years old, treated at the emergency room or hospitalized, is on average €820 per victim [11]. Promoting healthy behaviour of parents is important in order to reduce the number of unintentional injuries in young children. This thesis presents studies on the prevention of unintentional injuries in and around the home with regard to falls, poisoning, drowning, and burns.

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