Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion

The aim of the section is to anchor injury prevention within public health activities in Europe. More specifically, the section aims to a) increase awareness of injury and violence prevention and safety promotion in the broader public health community, b) increase the visibility of issues related to injury and violence prevention beyond the community of injury researchers, c) strengthen the links between researchers, policy makers and practitioners; d) support the dissemination of research results and their implementation into practice.

The section priorities are to:

Disseminate knowledge on registration/surveillance methods throughout Europe as well as effective preventive measures (in regard to great variation in injury rates across the European Region).
Discuss the development and standardization of injury registration methods in the health care system throughout Europe.
Disseminate knowledge on risk factors and their mechanisms of influence as well as identification of effective preventive measures for influencing attitudes, behavior, structures and culture with regard to injuries and safety.
Formulate advocacy messages on injury and violence prevention and safety promotion to European and national authorities in order to reduce this heavy burden on the health system in all European countries.
Stimulate the exchange views between key stakeholders from the scientific and policy making communities.

Current Activities:

We send information about recent news, activities and upcoming conferences on a regular basis to our section members.
Organize workshops and pre-conferences relating to various injury prevention topics at the annual EUPHA conference, often in collaboration with other sections.
The president and the vice-presidents organize an annual Section meeting during the EPH conference.
Co-operate with other sections within EUPHA and with other relevant European agencies and stakeholder in injury prevention.
Our section has teamed up with the WHO Europe Office to ask ASPHER (Schools of Public Health in Europe) to determine their interest in integrating the topic of injury prevention and safety promotion into the public health curriculums across Europe. We propose the schools consider using the WHO TEACH VIP TEACH-VIP training materials.

This section was established in 2006 in Montreux.

In March 2013, the Steering Committee of this section was established.

Injuries (including both unintentional ones and violence) are a major threat to life and health in many parts of the world. In the WHO European region injuries are the third leading cause of death. The region has some of the highest and lowest injury mortality rates in the world. Furthermore, the burden is unequally distributed both between and within countries.

Therefore, the World Health Organization and the European Commission have recognized injury prevention and safety promotion as a major priority and have developed policy frameworks, action plans and public health programs in order to strengthen injury and violence prevention activities within the region. This has led to the European Commission’s initiative to have a Communication on “Actions for a Safer Europe” and in a proposal for a “Council Recommendation on the prevention of injuries and the promotion of safety”. Both documents have been adopted by the Commission in June 2006. There also exists the World Health Organization European Region’s Resolution on Injury Prevention in the Region (RC55/R9).

Injury prevention and safety promotion section works closely with the European Association for Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion (EuroSafe) and other organizations to increase the health and wellbeing by providing expertise and stimulating activities to prevent injuries.