The WHO safe community program for injury prevention: evaluation of the impact on injury severity

Despite the fact that injuries consume a considerable amount of health care resources world-wide, 3.5 million people die from unintentional injuries e ach year. To handle this central public health problem, WHO has introduced the Safe Community accreditation Sor injury prevention programs. This study was to investigate the impact from a Safe Community program with regard to injury severity. Data were collected in Motala municipality (population = 41 000), Ostergotland county, Sweden, during one year before and one year a fter program intervention, from two sources: registration of trivial (AIS 1 ) and non-trivial (AIS 2-6) unintentional injuries from all acute care epis odes in the area and recollection of hospital bed days from discharge regis ters. The incidence of non-trivial injuries treated in health care was foun d to have decreased by 41% (95% confidence interval, 37-45%), while the tri vial injuries increased by 16% (9-22%). The larger decrease of non-trivial injuries was observed in all ages and injury event environments. The total number of bed days at emergency hospitals due to injuries decreased by 39% (37-41%) from 1983-84 to 1989, while the hospital bed utilization for other reasons decreased by 9% (8-9%). The study showed that implementation of a WHO Safe Community program led to the harm from unintentional injuries with in the community being considerably more reduced than that of the injury in cidence. In future assessments of injury prevention programs, classificatio n of injury severity should be included to increase the validity of inter-p rogram comparisons.