On 6 – 9 June 2004, the seventh World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion was held in Vienna. The aims of the series of injury conferences are:
| a. | to strengthen injury control as an integrated part of national and international public health policies; | ||||
| b. | to promote synergy and partnership among scientists and practitioners working in the different sectors and settings relevant to injury control; and | ||||
| c. | to highlight current international injury prevention milestones and global campaigns. | ||||
Twelve hundred delegates from 120 different countries attended the seventh World Conference, including 170 sponsored delegates from low and middle income countries. A wealth of practical experience as well as scientific evidence on the burden of injury was presented during 1500 oral and poster presentations. It is evident that the selection of papers that are presented in this special issue can only give a flavour of the issues and insights shared during the seventh World Conference.
The papers included in this special issue address the entire spectrum of injury prevention and control: from getting a better understanding of the relevance of the injury issue for public health policy to sharing good practices in prevention, emergency preparedness and trauma care. The majority of papers were presented in the state-of-the-art sessions and give a rather comprehensive review of the latest insights in assessing the injury problem and the feasibility of injury prevention and control actions.
Rigby underlines the importance of having international agreements on a concise set of indicators related to injury in order to assure that this topic, among the diversity of other relevant issues to be addressed in public health, is being picked up on the radar screen of policy makers. He reports on the work that is being done in view of developing a broad set of indicators on child health and development. He concludes that the art of developing health indicators is still in an early stage. Indicators based on the most clear-cut facts, such as death, are easily compiled and available across the globe, but at a deeper level, related to aspects such as lifestyles and developmental aspects, there is much yet to be achieved.
Towner's paper looks into the social and economic factors and their relationship with injuries in higher income countries. More specifically, the paper addresses the issue of injury inequalities: the existing gap; the respective causes; and how the gap can be bridged. As regards the latter point, the paper concludes that there are very few intervention studies available, although some intervention guidelines can be extracted from current practices addressing the disadvantaged groups. It is also noted that to address the inequality issue, packages of policies and interventions of a more comprehensive nature are needed, which tackle social exclusion as such. Some promising initiatives in the UK are reported by Towner.
Peden presents the highlights of the World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention and major achievements since the launch of the report in April 2004. The report is unique as it thoroughly documents the worldwide burden of road traffic injuries and the opportunities of a wider implementation of successful interventions to reduce the burden in developing as well as developed countries. The huge marketing effort that coincided with the publication of the report has resulted in national programmes for road safety being launched in a great number of countries involving all WHO regions. It also resulted in the United Nations passing a resolution on global road safety and the World Health assembly's endorsement of a road safety and health resolution. After the successful launch and implementations process of the Violence and Health report, this World Report is another major milestone in the development of a consolidated injury prevention programme under the auspices of WHO and its Violence and Injury Prevention Programme.
Dahlberg presents the state of the art in violence prevention in developing and developed countries, of which a major outcome of the research was done in the wake of the World Report on Violence and Health. Public health has to play a role in increasing governments' knowledge of, and confidence in, workable interventions beyond policing and public security measures. The well-documented paper identifies some effective approaches. This relates in particular to interventions that address individuals' attitudes and behaviour or interpersonal relationships, as well as approaches that require more testing but seem to be promising owing to the available preliminary evidence on effectiveness. The latter relates to community interventions that focus on modifying characteristics of settings that promote violent behaviour or create conditions for violence to occur, such as school settings.
Community interventions seem to be promising for addressing the wider injury issue, including intentional as well as unintentional injuries. Rahim presents a short history of the ‘safe community’ concept and its implementation of the past two decades or so. The concept has been applied in different geographical locations and different cultural and political settings and evaluation reports indicate promising results. It is, however, concluded that more evaluation studies are needed, which are based on strong research design and evidence of sustained effects.
The special issue concludes with three short papers. The first short paper is delivered by Wright and reports on the process of developing the UNICEF report on child death in rich nations and includes excellent lessons for drafting documents for successful advocacy. The following two papers, Goosen et al. and Purtcher, address the issue of emergency preparedness and responding to disasters.
The authors, who were so willing to have their presentations reformatted into journal papers and to share their research with a wider audience, are thanked. It is beyond any doubt that the series of world conferences has become a major asset to the injury prevention community to share experiences in tackling the issue and to advocate for national and international prevention programmes. The eighth conference (Durban, April 2006) will provide another opportunity toshow that we can make a difference in injury prevention and safety promotion.