California — Targeted Issue

A Comprehensive Evaluation of Risk Watch: A School-based Injury Prevention

Aug. 1, 1999 - Feb. 28, 2002

Grant Number
H34MC00085
Project Overview
Injuries continue to be the leading cause of death among children. In response to this public health problem, multiple injury prevention education programs have been developed to address this need. Unfortunately, most of these programs only focus on a particular injury area for a certain age group and are often only developed for local use. This fragmentation results in no assurances that children will receive comprehensive education about all injury areas or that there is any standardization of curriculum among states in the area of injury prevention. Risk Watch is a comprehensive school-based injury prevention program that teaches children from pre-school through 8th grade about safe behaviors for all unintentional injury areas in a developmentally appropriate manner. Of particular concern is the extent states are adopting the use of Risk Watch without a clear understanding of the impact of Risk Watch on decreasing children's injuries. The goals of this project are to (1) implement the Risk Watch Program in five intervention schools in the San Pedro/Narbonne Cluster of Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) using a quasi-experimental design; (2) determine the impact of the Risk Watch Program on children's knowledge and attitudes by measuring performance on tests applied before and after the curriculum modules in the San Pedro/Narbonne school cluster; (3) determine the effects of Risk Watch Program on injury fatalities, emergency department visits, paramedic responses, and school reported injuries in the San Pedro/Narbonne Cluster compared with the control cluster of Banning/Carson; and (4) disseminate a final report of the evaluation of the Risk Watch Program to local, state and federal agencies involved in injury prevention education.
Institution
Harbor-UCLA Medical Center Research and Education Institute
Main Contact
Award Amount
$298,822

Contacts

Name Role(s) Phone Email
Elizabeth Edgerton, MD
  • Principal Investigator