Ebook: Injury Research: Theories, Methods, and Approaches

Injury is recognized as a major public health issue worldwide. In most countries, injury is the leading cause of death and disability for children and young adults age 1 to 39 years. Each year in the United States, injury claims about 170,000 lives and results in over 30 million emergency room visits and 2.5 million hospitalizations. Injury is medically defined as organ/tissue damages inflicted upon oneself or by an external agent either accidentally or deliberately. Injury encompasses the undesirable consequences of a wide array of events, such as motor vehicle crashes, poisoning, burns, falls, and drowning, medical error, adverse effects of drugs, suicide and homicide. The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable growth in injury research, both in scope and in depth. To address the tremendous health burden of injury morbidity and mortality at the global level, the World Health Organization in 2000 created the Department of Injury and Violence Prevention, which has produced several influential reports on violence, traffic injury, and childhood injury. The biennial World Conference on Injury Control and Safety Promotion attracts a large international audience and has been successfully convened nine times in different countries. In the United States, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control became an independent program of the federal Centers for Disease Prevention and Control in 1997. Since then, each state health department has created an office in charge of injury prevention activities and over a dozen universities have established injury control research centers. This volume will fill an important gap in the scientific literature by providing a comprehensive and up-to-date reference resource to researchers, practitioners, and students working on different aspects of the injury problem and in different practice settings and academic fields.

Injury Research

Theories, Methods, and Approaches

Guohua Li and Susan Baker, editors

From the long-held popular belief, “accidents will happen,” it is now recognized that this needn’t be the case. More and more, injury is being seen as no accident, not only predictable, but preventable—and an important public health issue requiring rigorous study and multiple levels of intervention.

To this end, Injury Research: Theories, Methods, and Approaches assembles a team of multidisciplinary experts from around the globe. Early chapters provide a solid foundation for gathering injury data and monitoring trends. Research methods and injury-reduction approaches gleaned from public health, medicine, engineering, behavioral science, and other areas demonstrate both the intricacies of causation and the potential for intervention. The result is an authoritative and comprehensive textbook relevant for anyone planning to enter a career in injury control and prevention.

Injury Research is a bedrock text for graduate students studying injury and violence epidemiology as part of a Master’s in Public Health program. Graduate students in related fields including emergency medicine, biomechanical engineering, transportation safety, urban planning, risk assessment, and criminal justice will find this book an important reference as well.

“The first textbook that comprehensively presents the theories and methods of injury research — from the way ergonomics can reduce injuries to the effect of trauma-center systems on an injured person’s chances of survival.” – New York Times