Injury Control

At this year's PAS meeting, the Race in Medicine and Injury Control SIG's joint session focused on issues at the intersection of race and injury through the lenses of research, academic-community partnerships, policy, and practice. During the session, a representative from the National Institutes of Health spoke to research priorities related to trauma and disparities. We heard from researchers who have led studies to address race in relation to intentional and unintentional injury. Injury prevention advocates discussed innovative ongoing collaborative efforts between academic centers and communities of color in Chicago and Baltimore that aim to explain and reduce injury disparities. The session culminated with a discussion on necessary policy changes that are required at federal, state, and local levels and the translation of these policy changes into practice. The content areas and speakers this year were:

Overview of race and injury: Sadiqa Kendi, MD, FAAP; is an attending in the Emergency Department (ED) of Children’s National Health System at the Sheikh Zayed and United Medical Center campuses. She serves as medical director of Safe Kids DC and is in the process of starting a Safety Center to provide injury prevention equipment and education to Washington, D.C., area families. She is one of a few physicians in the United States who is certified as a child passenger safety technician and participates in injury prevention research and advocacy.

NICHD – Injury Research Agenda: Valerie Maholmes, Ph.D.; Dr. Valerie Maholmes is the chief of the Pediatric Trauma and Critical Illness Branch at the NICHD. In this capacity, she supports research and training in trauma, injury, and critical illness across the continuum of care. She serves on numerous NIH and federal interagency working groups to further the mission and goals of the branch. Unintentional injury – Disparities in sudden unexplained infant deaths: Kyran Quinlan, MD, MPH; Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Division of General Pediatrics at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago He has devoted his career to understanding the epidemiology of injury and injury prevention across leading causes of childhood death including motor vehicle traffic, sleep-related infant death, and burn. He has served as the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention and has contributed to numerous guidelines and policy statements.

Intentional injury/resilience: Alison Culyba, MD, Ph.D., MPH; Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Her research seeks to understand factors that protect youth from violence using novel methodological approaches to study the role of family, community and environmental factors in protecting youth and translating these findings into community-based interventions.

Academic-Community Partnerships: Addressing playground safety in Chicago: Karen Sheehan, MD, MPH is a Professor of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She is a founding volunteer of the Chicago Youth Programs, a community-based organization that works to improve the health and life opportunities of at-risk youth. She is also Associate Chair of Advocacy for the Department of Pediatrics and Medical Director of Lurie Children’s Injury Prevention & Research Center and Lurie Children's Healthy Communities.

Mentorship-based youth violence prevention intervention: Leticia Ryan, MD, MPH is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and has a joint appointment in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is the Director of Research in the Division of Pediatric Emergency Medicine. Her areas of clinical expertise include pediatric emergency medicine.

Vanya Jones, Ph.D., MPH is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her work is at the nexus of research and practice to reduce injuries by applying social and behavioral science theories and research methods to create, implement, and evaluate behavior change programs.

Michelle Becote-Jackson, MS, IRL Community Partner, Senior Vice President for Youth Development and Social Responsibility at the YMCA of Central Maryland Policy and Practice: Joe Wright, MD, MPH; senior vice president and Chief Medical Officer University of Maryland Capital Region Health, Adjunct professor of emergency medicine and health policy and management at the George Washington University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. He has held national leadership positions and informed policy change through his work in Emergency Medical Services for Children (EMSC) and with the American Academy of Pediatrics. The three-hour session concluded with attendees and speakers discussing best practice approaches for reducing injury disparities, increasing community-academic partnerships, increasing research in injury prevention and policy approaches to injury prevention.