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

Abstract #110671

Nhan Tran, MHS, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 Wolfe St, Room E-8141, Baltimore, MD 21205, 202-955-7487, nhtran@jhsph.edu, Adnan Hyder, MD, MPH, School of Hygiene and Public Health- Dept. of International Health, Johns Hopkins University, 615 North Wolfe Street, E-8132, Baltimore, MD 21205, and Radin Umar, PhD, PEng, PCM, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Serdang, Malaysia.

Road traffic injuries have reach epidemic proportions worldwide and will become the third leading cause of all DALYs lost by the year 2020 . Of particular concern are injuries and fatalities resulting from motorcycle crashes in low and middle-income countries, where motorcycles account for up to 50% of all motorized transport . While there have been successful examples of interventions such as helmets in high income countries that have been proven to reduce the severity of injuries once a crash has taken place, there is limited research that identifies and evaluates low cost interventions aimed at preventing the crash itself in low and middle income country settings.

This study is the first to evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention using Visibility Enhancement Materials (VEMs) to prevent motorcycle crashes at a population level. The study uses a case-control design to compare crash, injury, and fatality rates in two districts in Selangor State, Malaysia. As a low cost intervention aimed at the prevention of motorcycle crashes, VEMs have the potential for widespread application in other resource poor settings with limited access to post traumatic care and rehabilitative services.

Learning Objectives:

• 1) Understand the mechanisms by which motorcycle injuries and fatalities occur and identify interventions to prevent/reduce the impact of injuries/fatalities.
• 2) Describe the effectiveness of VEMs at preventing motorcycle crashes.
• 3) Identify health and transport policy applications for VEM-based interventions in other low and middle-income countries.

Keywords: Injury Prevention, Intervention

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.

Recorded presentation