I found the article I am chatting about today as particularly interesting, and not just because I lived through the event under examination. January 2011 saw 99% of my home state of Queensland, Australia, declared a disaster zone. We had survived weeks of intense rain across much of the state, and the sodden ground meant floodwaters […]
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Conferences and collaborations
Last week I had the privilege of attending and presenting at two conferences in Brisbane, the capital of my home state of Queensland, Australia. The 20th conference for the International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety was followed by the Road Safety, Research, Policing and Education Conference 2013. In case you had not previously considered attending conferences, […]
Preventing Unintentional Ingestion of Marijuana by Children
Editor Note – The following guest blog post is by Jodi Duke, MPH. Jodi is a PhD student in the Health Systems, Management and Policy Department at the Colorado School of Public Health. Disclosure – I am a coauthor on Health Impact Assessment discussed in this post. A number of states and municipalities in the […]
Wellington’s recent earthquakes
Hearing that Wellington (on the north island on New Zealand) had been struck by an earthquake of 6.8 magnitude, just weeks after being shaken by a 6.5 magnitude earthquake, has me thinking that ‘injury prevention’ is so much more broad in scope than perhaps I had previously realised. Having visited Wellington in October 2012, I am familiar […]
CNS Prescription Drug Abuse
A recent report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in the United States highlights the fact that prescription drug abuse is not limited to painkillers but extends into other classes of drugs including central nervous systems stimulants. http://www.samhsa.gov/data/spotlight/spot103-CNS-stimulants-adults.pdf These stimulants are used to treat conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder but […]
Injury prevention and children of adults diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease
Regular readers of the Injury Prevention blog will know that I frequently share articles, reports and other information that changes the way I perceived and/or understood various mechanisms of injury and their broader impact. Hopefully sharing my own experiences is useful to others, particularly if we share an epiphany-of-sorts. Today’s post is also enlightening for […]
Bridging the gap between science and practice
I have spoken and written about the importance of finding ways to implement research findings. I have even gone so far as to suggest that until we implement more of what we already know, there may be little justification for more research. Many in the field share these views. In any case, a recent announcement […]
Cannabis safer than alcohol for drivers (?)
Someone brought to my attention a link to a site with the intriguing name “The Daily Chronic’. It appears to be a pro-cannabis site. They came across a paper in Accid Analysis and Prevention by a pot advocate but which seems to show that marijuana is safer for drivers than alcohol. Even if confirmed, I […]
Beware the predatory OA journal!
For some time I have been corresponding with three WAME (World Association of Medical Editors) colleagues about our shared concern arising from the proliferation of predatory journals. These are those journals, almost invariably Open Access, that invite you to submit your best paper and assure you prompt peer review and quick publication. What they often […]
Injury Prevention and Alzheimer’s Disease
A fascinating article in the August edition of Prevention Science has me looking at Alzheimer’s Disease in a whole different way. Rather than me seeing it as an outcome, a disease which today afflicts tens of millions of people around the world, I now see it as a brain injury which to some extent can be prevented. […]