Healthy People 2030 includes goals focused on preventing intentional and unintentional injuries, including injuries that cause death. In 2000, WHO created the Department for Injury and Violence Prevention to increase global visibility of unintentional injuries and violence and to facilitate public health measures. The starting point of any injury prevention program is to examine data related to deaths and hospitalizations due to injuries. Many consider that the first 50 years of the 20th century were the pre-scientific era of injury control, due to the prevailing perception at that time that injuries were the result of inevitable, random or inevitable events, called accidents.
Because most injuries are now considered preventable, the challenges lie in identifying winnable battles over injury and violence and in developing effective policies and delivering effective programs that can save many more lives. This report documented the scant scientific progress that has been made in understanding the cause of injuries or in applying what was already known to reduce injuries and improve trauma outcomes. Although they could be useful for recognizing the incidence of injuries, ICD codes were not reliable for comparing injuries or describing their severity. However, an epidemiological framework was not available for how these approaches work to reduce injuries for another 40 years.
Pedestrian injuries cause more deaths in this age group, but there are no affordable and readily available strategies that have been proven to reduce the frequency or severity of these injuries. It can help reduce costs associated with injuries and improve productivity by minimizing time lost due to injury or illness. Many unintentional injuries are caused by motor vehicle crashes and falls, and many intentional injuries involve gun violence and physical assault. Injury rates have fallen considerably in the United States since 1961; however, while effective strategies to prevent unintentional injuries are now widely recognized (1), they continue without being properly adopted.
