Design and construction of an Unintentional Injury Risk Index (UIRI) to measure frequency and severity of accidental injuries in Europe

ABSTRACT

In today's Risk Society, accidental injuries are considered an important public health problem. To design coherent programmes aimed at reducing risk, it is necessary to measure the magnitude of this phenomenon with its changing meaning –from random misfortune to foreseeable and preventable risk. To calculate the total volume of accidental injuries in Europe, the empirical aim of this article, we have designed an adequate measurement instrument: the Unintentional Injury Risk Index (UIRI) counts both the probability (incidence) and the consequences (severity) of injuries. The index calculated for EU countries in 2009 revealed that accidents caused injuries and suffering equivalent to 96.4 deaths per 100,000 population. Based on the index, other specific indices can be calculated, such as personal proneness, country risk or site hazard indices, useful for deepening knowledge on the risk factors for unintentional injuries.

KEYWORDS:

• Unintentional Injury Risk Index
• weighted incidence index
• combining data sources
• monitoring public health
• Europe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. $\text{Personal proneness}\text{=}\frac{\text{UIRI sub-index of persons by age group }\left(\text{\% of UIRI}\right)}{\text{proportion of persons in this age group }}\times \text{100}$.

2. $\text{Place danger}\text{=}\frac{\text{UIRI sub-index of a place of accident }\left(\text{\% of UIRI}\right)}{\text{proportion of all accidents in said place }}\times \text{100}$.

3. A score lower than 100 would indicate a low personal propensity to suffer an accident or, in the case of place, a lower level of place danger. For example, in Spain in 2012, the sub-index for personal proneness reached its maximum among persons 75 years of age and older (personal proneness sub-index = 236.7) and was even higher for women in this age group (277.1). The sub-index measuring place danger for Spain in 2012 was 208.1 for workplaces, 168.1 for sport and leisure facilities and 107.1 for homes (Camarero, 2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundación Mapfre [grant number BIL13/PR072].

Notes on contributors

Mercedes Camarero

Mercedes Camarero is a lecturer and senior researcher in the Department of Sociology, Universidad Pablo de Olavide (Seville, Spain). Her research interests are in the areas of individual risk, social structure, social quality and the developing of composite indicators. Currently, she is engaged in the research project entitled ‘Social Quality in Europe. Design and Development of Composite Indexes for the Measurement and Monitoring of the Quality of European Societies’ (Spanish Ministry of Economics). She is an author of the article Everyday accidents in Spain: Prevalence, Risk and Hazardousness (Mapfre Foundation, 2015).