TY - JOUR T1 - Impact of the national home safety equipment scheme ‘Safe At Home’ on hospital admissions for unintentional injury in children under 5: a controlled interrupted time series analysis JF - Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health JO - J Epidemiol Community Health SP - 53 LP - 59 DO - 10.1136/jech-2021-216613 VL - 76 IS - 1 AU - Trevor Hill AU - Carol Coupland AU - Denise Kendrick AU - Matthew Jones AU - Ashley Akbari AU - Sarah Rodgers AU - Michael Craig Watson AU - Edward Tyrrell AU - Sheila Merrill AU - Elizabeth Orton Y1 - 2022/01/01 UR - http://jech.bmj.com/content/76/1/53.abstract N2 - Background Unintentional home injuries are a leading cause of preventable death in young children. Safety education and equipment provision improve home safety practices, but their impact on injuries is less clear. Between 2009 and 2011, a national home safety equipment scheme was implemented in England (Safe At Home), targeting high-injury-rate areas and socioeconomically disadvantaged families with children under 5. This provided a ‘natural experiment’ for evaluating the scheme’s impact on hospital admissions for unintentional injuries.Methods Controlled interrupted time series analysis of unintentional injury hospital admission rates in small areas (Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs)) in England where the scheme was implemented (intervention areas, n=9466) and matched with LSOAs in England and Wales where it was not implemented (control areas, n=9466), with subgroup analyses by density of equipment provision.Results 57 656 homes receiving safety equipment were included in the analysis. In the 2 years after the scheme ended, monthly admission rates declined in intervention areas (−0.33% (−0.47% to −0.18%)) but did not decline in control areas (0.04% (−0.11%–0.19%), p value for difference in trend=0.001). Greater reductions in admission rates were seen as equipment provision density increased. Effects were not maintained beyond 2 years after the scheme ended.Conclusions A national home safety equipment scheme was associated with a reduction in injury-related hospital admissions in children under 5 in the 2 years after the scheme ended. Providing a higher number of items of safety equipment appears to be more effective in reducing injury rates than providing fewer items.Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. The data used in this study are available in the SAIL Databank at Swansea University, Swansea, UK, but as restrictions apply, they are not publicly available. All proposals to use SAIL data are subject to review by an independent Information Governance Review Panel (IGRP). Before any data can be accessed, approval must be given by the IGRP. The IGRP gives careful consideration to each project to ensure proper and appropriate use of SAIL data. When access has been granted, it is gained through a privacy protecting safe haven and remote access system referred to as the SAIL Gateway. SAIL has established an application process to be followed by anyone who would like to access data via SAIL at https://www.saildatabank.com/application-process. The HES Data (copyright 2021) was reused with the permission of the Health and Social Care Information Centre. All rights reserved. Data sharing agreement number DARS-NIC-50919-D5R5D-V1.4. ER -