Child and adolescent injury research in 1998

Objective: To describe current research in child and adolescent injury prev ention by pediatric and public health investigators for comparison with nat ional recommendations and agendas. Data Sources: Abstracts submitted to the 1998 annual meetings of the Pediat ric Academic Societies/Ambulatory Pediatrics Association and the American P ublic Health Association on injury or violence in children or adolescents. Study Selection: All abstracts of projects that addressed primarily injury or violence prevention involving children or adolescents. Data Extraction: For 123 abstracts, 2 coauthors extracted and classified ag e of the population, type of injury, study design, sizes of the sample and denominator, and type of outcome. Result: Adolescents were the most frequent (49%) age group included. The in vestigations were concerned most with injuries caused by violence (33%), fo llowed by motor vehicle trauma (14%) and bums (7%). Descriptive surveillanc e (38%),surveys (32%), and case series (13%) comprised the overwhelming maj ority of methods used. The studies primarily sought to identify risk factor s for injury (32%), describe the victims (20%), or measure knowledge and/or practice (26%). Nine studies (7%) sought to measure the effect of interven tions in some way, and only 2 focused primarily on methodology development. Conclusions: Injury prevention research projects presented at the 1998 Pedi atric Academic Societies and American Public Health Association meetings we re proportionate to the frequencies of injury by age and by external cause in the United States. However, in comparison with recommendations for agend as of national injury prevention research, more research is needed to impro ve injury prevention methods and to evaluate interventions.