Introduction Home may be where the heart is but it can also be a dangerous place. More injuries happen in the home than anywhere else, over 3.5 million children experience an unintentional household injury every year (Safe Kids, 2016). This is one of the most under recognized public health issues. Many times, when a mortality results from an unintentional injury it is viewed as an accident. However, most of these injuries were preventable. Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death in children in the United States with nearly one million dying each year, 2,200 of these deaths occurring at home (Safe Kids, 2016). These rates are entirely too high especially when considering they were preventable. There are ways to reduce these rates,
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They are the leading cause of death in children and account for nine million Emergency Department visits annually (Safe Kids, 2016). A parent losing a child is a tragedy, this tragedy is exacerbated when the tragedy could have been avoided. It’s vital for individuals to realize these injuries are preventable. One of the main aspects of public health is injury and disease prevention. While there is a plethora of time and research going into disease prevention like vaccines, there is not a lot of resources going into injury prevention. There is not much of a purpose in spending time and money vaccinating children if parents aren’t aware of simple things like needing to put their baby on their back to sleep, resulting in that baby dying of Sudden Infant Death …show more content…
While injuries can occur in any way there are some more frequent types, such as, falls, poisonings, burns, and sleep suffocation. Poisoning is one of the biggest. Half of the two million calls to Poison Control involved children ages five and under. Nine out of ten poisonings occur at home leading to 64,000 children at the Emergency Department annually due to accidental poisoning (Safe Kids, 2016). Many parents realize the dangers of poisonous substances like cleaners and other items that are marked with labels. However, they do not always think about medicine, unmarked products, batteries, etc. Children are curious and they like to put items directly in their mouth which highly contributes to the extent of this problem. The one other reason unintentional poisoning happens is due to children easily mistaking items that look-a-like because they tend to recognize color and shape before a label. These issues can easily be avoided. Many safety tips require buying an item to implement them, i.e. a smoke detector for fire safety. For the most part, preventing poisoning is as easy as keeping the hazardous products out of children’s sight and reach, just making simple modifications to the home (Chandran, 2013). This issue is important because not only is it increasing Emergency Department visits, it is killing at least two children in the United States per year (CDC,
They are the leading cause of death in children and account for nine million Emergency Department visits annually (Safe Kids, 2016). A parent losing a child is a tragedy, this tragedy is exacerbated when the tragedy could have been avoided. It’s vital for individuals to realize these injuries are preventable. One of the main aspects of public health is injury and disease prevention. While there is a plethora of time and research going into disease prevention like vaccines, there is not a lot of resources going into injury prevention. There is not much of a purpose in spending time and money vaccinating children if parents aren’t aware of simple things like needing to put their baby on their back to sleep, resulting in that baby dying of Sudden Infant Death …show more content…
While injuries can occur in any way there are some more frequent types, such as, falls, poisonings, burns, and sleep suffocation. Poisoning is one of the biggest. Half of the two million calls to Poison Control involved children ages five and under. Nine out of ten poisonings occur at home leading to 64,000 children at the Emergency Department annually due to accidental poisoning (Safe Kids, 2016). Many parents realize the dangers of poisonous substances like cleaners and other items that are marked with labels. However, they do not always think about medicine, unmarked products, batteries, etc. Children are curious and they like to put items directly in their mouth which highly contributes to the extent of this problem. The one other reason unintentional poisoning happens is due to children easily mistaking items that look-a-like because they tend to recognize color and shape before a label. These issues can easily be avoided. Many safety tips require buying an item to implement them, i.e. a smoke detector for fire safety. For the most part, preventing poisoning is as easy as keeping the hazardous products out of children’s sight and reach, just making simple modifications to the home (Chandran, 2013). This issue is important because not only is it increasing Emergency Department visits, it is killing at least two children in the United States per year (CDC,