Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #101487

Michael L. Nance, MD, Department of Surgery, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, 34th and Civic Center Boulevard, Philadelphia, PA 19104, (215) 590-5932, nance@email.chop.edu, Douglas J. Wiebe, PhD, Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Pennsylvania, 933 Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6021, and Charles C. Branas, PhD, Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Room 807 Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6021.

Background: Injury morbidity and mortality are ubiquitous in the United States but prevention resources comparatively scarce. To help allocate available resources, injury prevention priorities need to be established. How best to assess injury prevention priorities is unclear. Methods: To establish potential injury prevention priorities, we compared several injury-related variables from the National Trauma Data Bank (NTDB) for the period January 1993 to December 2002. We computed four injury prevention priority scores (one previously validated and three novel). An injury prevention priority score (IPPS) was calculated based on the frequency of an injury mechanism and mean injury severity score. Additionally, a mortality priority score (Mort-PS), an acute hospital charge priority score (Charge-PS), and a years of potential life lost (YPLL-PS) priority score were calculated for each of 13 common injury mechanisms. Results: For the 10-year period, 671,227 patients of all ages were entered into the NTDB from trauma centers across the United States. Motor vehicle-related injuries ranked first on all four priority scores (Table). Suffocation because of lethality and firearm-related injuries because of lethality and severity were also highly ranked. Conclusions: In an era of finite prevention resources, prevention priorities must be established. By comparing four unique measures, injury burden was assessed based on traditional mortality comparisons (Mort-PS), severity of injury (IPPS), acute financial burden (Charge-PS), and long-term societal losses (YPLL-PS) to provide a more complete assessment of prevention priorities. In this United States trauma center population, motor vehicle and firearm-related injuries appear to be the most imperative prevention priorities.

Learning Objectives:

• Review measures of injury prevention priority
• Discuss optimal measure of injury prevention priorities.

Keywords: Injury Prevention, Injury Control

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.