Assessment of a Child Injury Prevention Intervention among Mexican Americans in the Texas-Mexico Border

Purpose: To assess the effectiveness of a child injury prevention intervention among families with children 12 years old or younger Mexican Americans living in impoverished neighborhoods known as colonias in the South Texas border region.

Background: Unintentional childhood injury is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity for children ages 1-4 in the United States, with half of the deaths occurring at the home setting. Research shows that deaths from injuries occur more frequently in low income families.

Methods: This was a one group with a pre-posttest design pilot study to test an intervention conducted in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. The sample consisted of 58 colonia households with children less than 14 years of age and a convenience sampling technique was used. Trained promotoras delivered the intervention and administered a survey to parents to measure injury-related knowledge. Descriptive and inferential analyses were used for data analyses.

Results: All 58 participants were females and their age ranged from 19-54 years old. 80% were married followed by 12% single. All participants had elementary education, 17% completed middle school and 25% attended high school. After the education intervention, there was a statistically significant increase in child injury-related knowledge among participants in all four global categories measured: Infant safety (ages 0-2 years) (p=0.0001), children safety (ages 2-8 years) (p= 0.0001), road safety (p=0.0001); and home safety (p= 0.0001).

Conclusions: This study shows that culturally appropriate intervention are effective in increasing the injury prevention knowledge of U.S. border residents living in low-income areas.