Play safe with Sisimpur: an evaluation of a child injury prevention intervention in Bangladesh

Abstract

For children under the age of 18 in Bangladesh, road traffic injuries, drowning, animal bites, poisonous substances, falls, burns, and electrocutions and fire-related burns pose significant and serious risk and are a leading cause of mortality, especially in rural areas. Despite this, there is limited evidence of what works to increase children’s knowledge of injury prevention and decrease incidents of unintentional injury. This study addresses this gap by presenting findings from an evaluation of Play Safe with Sisimpur. Leveraging the popularity of Sisimpur, the Bangladeshi co-production of Sesame Street, Play Safe with Sisimpur employed a school-based child-to-child and adult-to-adult mentorship model, designed to improve injury prevention knowledge and promote behavior change. Child survey results demonstrate a significant change between baseline and end line in the knowledge of children related to injury prevention and treatment for burns, electrocution, falls, household hazards, playing safe, road traffic injuries, and water safety. Adult mentee survey results demonstrate a significant change between baseline and end line in the knowledge of adult mentees related to injury prevention and treatment of animal injuries, burns, falls, household hazards, and road traffic injuries.

Keywords:

• Child injury prevention
• Bangladesh
• program evaluation

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the AO Foundation and the AO Alliance Foundation who funded both Play Safe with Sisimpur and its third-party evaluation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The AO is the premier innovator in the surgical treatment of bone fractures and disorders. Innovation at the AO goes from bench to bedside, including basic research, product development, clinical validation, and valorization. The AO provides continuing support to the AO Alliance Foundation, a developmental non-profit organization dedicated to improving fracture care in low and middle income countries.

2 Through on a competitive RFP process, Sesame Workshop selected D3 Systems to lead the evaluation based on their proposed design, experience leading evaluation projects globally with a diversity of partners, and experience leading evaluations in South Asia specifically, including evaluations of both health and education interventions.

3 Bonferroni correction, alpha = 0.05, m = 37

4 McNemar Test

5 Continuity corrected

6 Bonferroni correction, alpha = 0.05, m = 32

7 McNemar Test

8 Continuity corrected

9 Binomial distribution used

10 In Narsingdi district, most cars did not have seatbelts. Adult responses to this question may indicate that the question was not properly contextualized, and parents could be saying it is in fact hard, because they are not available for children, or any passengers, to wear. 

11 Similar to the issues of seatbelts, adult responses to this question may indicate that the question was not properly contextualized. Parents mentioned that helmet wearing was very uncommon due to cost and availability, so parents may be agreeing that wearing a helmet is difficult/hard because they are thinking about the accessibility of it.

12 Did not collect information about the nature of injury.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the AO Foundation and the AO Alliance Foundation (AO Strategy Fund Project No. 52).