Unintentional, non-fire-related carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning is a leading cause of poisoning death and injury in the USA. Most residential poisonings are preventable, so how to get people to adopt these protective behaviours?

IP editor Brian Johnston talks to Douglas Rupert, Health Communication Program, RTI International, and Scott Damon, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about what their research looking at the question revealed.

See also:
Risk and protective behaviours for residential carbon monoxide poisoning

Can emergency department data sharing help prevent violence and alcohol-related harm? Editor Brain Johnston talks to Karen Hughes (behavioural epidemiologist, Centre for Public Health, Liverpool John Moores University) about the way data is integration into multi-agency policy and practice in the North West of England, and the role this played in driving local violence prevention activity.

See also:
Data sharing for prevention: a case study in the development of a comprehensive emergency department injury surveillance system and its use in preventing violence and alcohol-related harms

IP editor Brian Johnston talks to Ciara Zachary (postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Health Behavior and Society, Johns Hopkins University) about her study looking at barriers to implementing falls prevention programmes in senior centres.

See also:
Barriers to senior centre implementation of falls prevention programmes

Tackling inequality in health is an important part of the public policy agenda in many countries; however, many interventions that could improve overall health might also increase inequality.

Robert Lu (Institute of Public Health, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan) has been tracking mortality from road traffic injuries after a mandatory motorcycle helmet law was introduced in Taiwan, and editor Brian Johnston asks him how this varied regionally and over time.

See also:
Reducing regional inequality in mortality from road traffic injuries through enforcement of the mandatory motorcycle helmet law in Taiwan

Editor Brian Johnston talks to Laurel Austin (professor in the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School) about using mental models to help prevent injuries and communicate risk.

See also:
Injury prevention and risk communication: a mental models approach

Brian Johnston, IP editor, talks to Katherine Smith, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, about her recent study examining the use by the US media of the expression ‘freak accident’ in relation to injury events.

See also:
‘It was a freak accident’: an analysis of the labelling of injury events in the US press

Brian Johnston, Injury Prevention’s editor, talks to Jennifer Taylor from the Drexel University School of Public Health, Philadelphia, about this month’s editor’s choice.

Read the article online:
Triangulating case-finding tools for patient safety surveillance: a cross-sectional case study of puncture/laceration

Thermostatic mixer valves - which keep water delivered to the bath below a maximum temperature - can prevent scalds. But would adding them to new build houses and those undergoing a change in use be cost-effective?

Ceri Phillips (Swansea University, UK) talks to IP editor Brian Johnston about what his study in Scotland revealed.

See also:
Preventing bath water scalds: a cost-effectiveness analysis of introducing bath thermostatic mixer valves in social housing

Brian Johnston, Injury Prevention’s editor, talks to Jagnoor Jagnoor from the George Institute in Australia about this month’s editor’s choice.

India’s million deaths study used cross sectional verbal autopsies to take a snapshot of the main causes of deaths in India - data which are otherwise poorly reported.  Jagnoor and colleagues used these data to examine cause of death due to injury in children under five, the results of which are published in Injury Prevention this month.

See also:
Unintentional injury deaths among children younger than 5 years of age in India: a nationally representative study

Although most people prefer to bicycle on facilities separated from motor traffic, as with cycle tracks, guidance in the USA has suggested that these separated facilities are more dangerous than bicycling on the road. Brian Johnston (IP editor-in-chief) asks Anne Lusk (Harvard School of Public Health) what research on this reveals.