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Why a New Zealand Injury Prevention Strategy?
Injury is a leading cause of premature death and disability in New Zealand. Injuries currently result in about 1,700 deaths and 50,000 hospitalisations per year and during 2006/07, over 1.8 million injury claims were accepted by the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC). The impact of injury on individuals, families/whanau and communities is pervasive. The social and economic costs at all levels are considerable and are estimated to be $6-7 billion per year, and a NOHSAC report estimates that the economic and social costs of occupational diseases and injury is $20.9 billion a year, yet most injuries and their consequences are preventable.
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What causes injury?
A broad range of interacting factors affect how many injuries occur. Attitudes toward safety and behavioural factors are critical. Measures such as reducing speed, not drink driving, and wearing restraints prevent injuries on the road, while balancing and strengthening exercises for older persons can reduce fall injuries. Environmental and engineering factors are also important in reducing all types of injury. Pool fencing has been shown to reduce drowning in children, while ergonomically designed workstations can reduce the likelihood of musculoskeletal injuries occurring. Injury can also result from more complex underlying social factors such as alcohol and drug abuse, or poor living conditions. Mental health issues may also be a significant contributor to some types of injury, leading some people to harm themselves.
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The benefits of injury prevention
Effective injury prevention results in significant economic and social benefits. It can reduce the number of new cases of injury, as well as reduce the severity of those injuries that do occur. The benefits of injury prevention are obvious: they include continued quality of life for individuals and families/whanau who live free from injury. They also include less disruption to, and increased productivity for, businesses and service organisations. The wider community also has a lot to gain from having a safer, positive, and more productive population, and from less demand being placed on the health care system due to injury.
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Achievements in reducing injuries in New Zealand
New Zealand has improved its injury prevention performance in a number of areas over recent years where concerted efforts have been made. For example, with the support of an integrated government strategy, significant reductions in road related fatalities have occurred over the past decade. This was a result of a concerted and targeted commitment in the early 1990s. Fatalities have reduced from 646 in 1992, to 501 in 1998 and 423 in 2007. Gains have also been made in the area of youth suicide prevention because of a collaborative and targeted approach. In the year 2000, 96 young people died by suicide and in 2003 95 young people died by suicide. This is a significant decline since the peak in 1995, when 156 youth suicides were recorded, and it is the lowest number since 1986.
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Improving our injury prevention efforts
Although injury rates in New Zealand have declined over the past decade, further reductions are possible and desirable. We need to develop a culture that positively supports and values the prevention of injury. We have to shift people's thinking about injuries so they are seen to be preventable rather than an inevitable and unavoidable part of life. We need to raise the level of motivation and skill among individuals and organisations to create safer environments and support protective behaviours. We must also identify and address the conditions in our society that lead people to take unacceptable risks and/or cause harm to themselves or others.
Achieving a positive safety culture and creating safer environments is challenging and will only be achieved if injury prevention activity is well informed and well organised.
There are a number of deficiencies in our current injury prevention efforts. These include:
- Fragmentation of effort
Given the wide range of agencies and organisations involved in injury prevention, there is potential for inconsistent messages and unnecessary duplication of effort. Injury prevention activity needs to be integrated through co-ordination and collaboration between government agencies, non government organisations, local authorities and communities.
- Gaps in injury prevention activity
Some important injury issues have attracted limited attention relative to their impact, e.g. fall prevention and drowning prevention. Coverage in some areas is patchy. For example, we had a Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy, but lacked a cross-sectoral suicide prevention strategy covering all age groups. Some of these areas have now been addressed with the release of national strategies covering falls and drowning. The challenge now is to undertake effective implementation of these new strategies.
- Workforce capability issues
The injury prevention workforce is diverse, is often isolated and has limited access to training opportunities. The capability of the injury prevention workforce needs to be strengthened.
Injury Prevention Network of Aotearoa New Zealand (IPNANZ) Foundation Certificate in Injury Prevention: Te Aho Tapu is an example of workforce development. This four-day training for injury prevention practitioners is run by IPNANZ since 2005. For more information visit IPNANZ (www.ipnanz.org.nz)
- Quality of, access to and dissemination of injury information
There is a need for better, more accessible and improved dissemination of injury data and information to support injury prevention activity. Progress so far includes development of three Chartbooks of the New Zealand Injury Prevention Strategy serious injury outcome indicators (for population, Maori and children).
The New Zealand Injury Prevention Strategy addresses these and other issues through an approach that focuses on actions to improve the infrastructure that supports injury prevention activity in New Zealand, as well as the development of national strategies to address specific national injury prevention priority areas. In developing the Strategy, six national injury prevention priority areas were identified based on current statistics. They are: motor vehicle traffic crashes; suicide and deliberate self-harm; falls; workplace injuries (including occupational diseases); assault; and drowning and near-drowning. Implementation of the Strategy will lead to an improvement in New Zealand's injury prevention performance over time.
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