Saving Children: A Guide to Injury Prevention

This is a superb guide to the prevention of childhood injury--concise, carefully organized, clearly written, authoritative and realistic. It adopts a developmental approach to understanding the causes of injury and planning intervention, whether in infants, toddlers, preschoolers, elementary school children or young adolescents. Detailed information on specific injury is presented under an environmental rubric: the roadway, the home, the school and recreational area. Each chapter summarizes facts about the specific type of injury being considered, discusses developmental issues that affect its occurrence, and then offers guidelines for prevention. Both unintentional and intentional injuries are covered. The authors' recommendations are addressed to schools and child care centers; health care providers; public agencies; legislators and regulators; law enforcement professionals; voluntary organizations; designers, architects, builders and engineers; business and industry; and mass media. Children cannot be expected to avoid injury on their own. Adults must grant them freedom from injury by providing a safe environment.

Modena Hoover Wilson is at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.