High school start and finish times can be a controversial topic! A quick search of school start and finish times in Queensland, Australia, my home ground, sees a range of start times generally between 8.20-9.00am, and a range of finish times generally between 2.30-3.30pm. High school start and finish times can be controversial indeed if you have […]
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Ending men’s violence against women
Tuesday 25 November is White Ribbon Day in more than 60 countries around the world. Visit the Australian online resource to find out more about this inspiring campaign which is a male led Campaign to end men’s violence against women. The mission of the campaign is to make women’s safety a man’s issue too. The campaign works through primary […]
House fires
Australia was rocked by the deaths of 11 people from 2 families who perished in 1 house fire in a Brisbane suburb in August 2011. Just months after the three-year anniversary, the Coroner currently has the tasks of (1) The findings required by s.45(2) of the Coroners Act 2003; namely the identity of the deceased persons, when, […]
Response to John Langley from the Patron of Paper Cuts
For some while Langley and I have been debating whether injury prevention workers should try to prevent all injuries because (as I reason) we simply cannot predict which will be severe, or, as he argues, we need only prevent those that will be serious. After some back and forth, in a recent issue of Injury […]
Work-related traumatic brain injury
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can occur through various mechanisms, including violence and car crashes, but the mechanism of TBI I am focusing upon today is through a work-related injury. As a wife and mother, I know that I want my husband to return from work at the end of each shift in relatively the same […]
Taking the good with the bad: bike helmet website
I recently came across a website that managed to be both impressive and depressing. The link is http://www.cycle-helmets.com/index.html I have no idea how old it is or even, precisely, who is responsible for it. What is impressive is that it includes a massive amount of data on bicycling, bike helmet use, and helmet legislation for […]
Non-suicidal self-injury: Another effective avenue of intervention?
The 10th of October is World Mental Health Day, and here in Australia a variety of activities helped ensure that mental health was openly discussed during Mental Health Week (5-12 October). As a researcher who works with adolescents, I am interested in their mental health, particularly as it can have pervasive implications for their injury prevention. […]
Pedestrian safety video worth watching
Ted Miller, editorial board member and famed for much else, kindly sent a link to an excellent youtube video that I urge you to watch. I do so because I have long cautioned that pedestrian signals can be dangerous if you assume that cars will always respect them. I plead with my friends, family, and […]
Youth and injury prevention
Today’s blog was inspired by a tragedy on our local railway earlier this week. Unfortunately a man was killed after being run over by a train while he was spraying graffiti. Unfortunately this is not the first such death, and it prompted me to trawl PubMed and ‘see what is out there’. Researchers, practitioners and […]
Different questions for more answers?
This week I have been pondering the larger issue. You may wonder what brought this on? I live in Queensland, the Australian state with the dubious title of ‘skin cancer capital of the world’. I was a child of the 70’s. We spent hours in the sun covered in all sorts of oil that smelled […]