You can play a vital role in preventing injuries among school age children and youth. Age and developmental stage influence injury risks; injury prevention best practices for elementary school age children are different than they are for junior and senior high school youth.
Educators and parents can work together, at both the school and the school board level, to reduce child and youth injury.
Did You Know?
- Injury is the leading cause for emergency department visits for children and youth between 5 and 19 years old.
- Common causes of hospitalization for 1 to 19 year olds, include falls, transportation and suicide.
- For children ages 0 – 14 fall injuries is the leading cause of emergency department visits and hospitalizations is a result of fall injuries.
- For youth ages 15 - 19 being struck by an object is the leading cause of emergency department visits.
- Transportation is the leading cause of injury death for children and youth between ages 1-14 and suicide is the leading cause of hospitalizations and death for youth ages 15 - 19 years of age.
Key Messages
Elementary School
Promote by doing the following:
- Consult with the school’s parent council about the safety issues at and around the school.
- Advocate for safe walk-to-school programs.
Teach by doing the following:
- Include injury prevention education in lessons for various subjects.
- Set up a display about an injury issue during parent-teacher interviews.
- Lead through your own example.
Junior & Senior High School
Every day youth are bombarded with unhealthy messages about risk from many different sources. Healthy messages about managing risk need to be reinforced in junior and senior high schools to help normalize the idea of smart risk-taking.
Support Injury Prevention by doing the following:
- Participate in creating safe environments
- Identify and remove hazards and alert school authorities about on-going and potential hazards.
- Teach students to identify and remove hazards.
- Reduce the risk of injury by allowing students to practice and train how to do an activity.
- Engage in active supervision, especially for young children. This means staying alert and paying close attention, staying close enough to take action if needed and anticipating hazards.
- Model safe behaviour and ensure students are engaging in age-appropriate activities.
