Injury prevention and health promotion: A global perspective (original) (raw)

2018, Health Promotion Journal of Australia

Since its inception 27 years ago (1990), the Health Promotion Journal of Australia has featured many articles on aspects of injury prevention, particularly noticeable during the past five years. With this issue, it will be only the second time the journal has launched a Special Issue on injury prevention, the first one appearing in Volume 1, issue 2, in 1991. 1 As editors of the current issue, we felt the dedicated emphasis on injury prevention and health promotion in the journal is long overdue, given that our careers in injury prevention have changed considerably since the first Special Issue was published (and that a new cadre of health promotion professionals have entered the field). Therefore, we believe it is timely and important to feature some of the recent research focusing on injury prevention and health promotion. 2 | INJURIES AND VIOLENCE In addition to the many preventable diseases that are seen in the practice of health promotion, there is one health threat that the public still accepts as a fait accompli-injuries. Injuries, which include both unintentional injuries and violence, are a major public health problem impacting individuals, families and the communities in which they live. Injuries and violence are widespread, affecting populations across the world. 2 Every day, around the world, almost 16 000 people die from an injury-this accounts for 10% of the world's deaths, 32% more than the number of fatalities that result from malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS combined. Nearly one-third of the 5.8 million deaths from injuries are the result of violence and nearly another one-quarter are the result of road traffic crashes. Almost twice as many men than women die as a result of injuries and violence each year and traffic crashes are the main cause of death among young men worldwide. For every person who dies, thousands more are nonfatally injuredmany of them are permanently disabled. 2 Injury rates are also generally higher in rural areas, as compared with urban settings. 3,4 This is often related to poverty, remoteness and residents' exposure to different hazards (eg, violence in large urban centres, pesticides in rural and agricultural areas and access to water bodies). The built environment can be protective (such as bridges for pedestrians over roads or rives); however, environmental factors can also contribute to higher injury rates in rural areas, for example higher speed limits on rural roads, poorer road conditions,