EFFECTIVE INJURY CONTROL?

While there are a great many community based models for injury prevention in the scientific literature, the same cannot be said for evidence of their effectiveness. Researchers in Australia performed a comprehensive literature search for formally evaluated community based all cause child injury prevention programmes and succeeded in finding a total of only nine published examples. Only three of those studies found a significant effect of the intervention in question, and the authors suggest that the lack of research suggests “a clear need to increase effort on developing this evidence base.” (

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AIR POLLUTION AND MORTALITY

Urban air pollution assessed in the 1970s was associated with increased mortality over 25 years in France. Between 1974 and 1976, researchers took daily measurements of total suspended particles (TSP), black smoke (BS), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), and nitric oxide (NO) in 24 areas of seven French cities and assessed the health of almost 15 000 residents of those areas. Follow up was performed in 1995–98 and showed adjusted risk ratios for TSP, BS, NO₂, and NO for non-accidental mortality of 1.05, 1.07, 1.14, and 1.11 respectively. These results confirm previous findings from other similar studies, …