Affiliate Safe Community Support Centre
The Center for Injury Prevention Community Safety Promotion
Country: Republic of Korea
Number of inhabitants: 1,023,875
Programme started year: 1999 year
Affiliate Safe Community Support Centre: Designation year: 2004
1) The provision of Centre programs and services utilize multidisciplinary
and cross sectoral approaches.
The public and private institution sectors, as well as the
non-profit organizations/non-government organizations need
to participate in various aspects. Aware of this need, the
City of Suwon brought forth an organized system for these
multi-sector groups to participate extensively to promote
a Project to Make Suwon Safer.
2) The Centre provides a framework for promoting collective
action which includes involvement with community networks.
3) The Centre provides consultative support to communities
in the establishment of Safe Community initiatives.
In order to identify the injury problems and to explore the
resources within a community, the Center has planned and carried
out a community diagnosis in the initial phase. Based on the
community analysis, various community programs to prevent
injuries and promote safety within a community were developed
and implemented according to priorities and appropriate for
the community.
To promote the understanding and adoption of the Safe Community
Model as recognized colleagues of the WHO Collaborating Center
on Community Safety Promotion, the Center provided initiatives
to the community in conjunction with diverse sectors within
the community.
Through injury data analysis, we supported organizations,
groups, and health professionals at the local level to set
up agendas of injury problems and to implement prevention
programs according to priorities.
4) The Centre facilitates and supports community-based
strategic planning processes.
Therefore, in order to execute 'Making a Safer Suwon' project,
it was essential to investigate and analyze the local community
resources. Before executing the project fully, the city of
Suwon investigated each organization, systems and coalitions
to determine that the hidden resources within the city can
participate fully.
5) The Centre demonstrates leadership and stewardship in
addressing priority injury issues, high risk, and vulnerable
groups.
The Center developed and implemented injury prevention programs
targeting risk groups and environments within City of Suwon
with active participation of citizens. All safe community
programs were based on the six indicators for safe communities
of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Community Safety Promotion.
The program specially focused on the high-risk group that
had higher trauma and injury rates.
6) The Centre provides expert services and knowledge in
the area of injury data and injury surveillance issues.
To define the injury mortality in the City of Suwon, the
external causes of deaths during the years between 1997~2000
were analyzed based on the death certificates.
The Working Groups from municipal health center and the Ajou
University School of Medicine explored injury data resources
within the community and analyzed the data preliminarily to
set more cost-effective and better quality injury surveillance
systems in Suwon. The Working Groups started on the easily
available injury data resources that are including Annual
Reports issued by National Bureau of Statistics, Death Certificates,
Prehospital Ambulance Run Records, Emergency Department Log
Books, and Hospital Discharge Records.
7) The Centre demonstrates a long term commitment to supporting
Safe Communities and the Safe Community Network within their
organizations strategic plan.
In order to encourage spontaneous participation, a network
among local organizations associated with injury should be
built and kept sustainable. The active participation from
diverse sectors within a community is essential to the success
of the program. So an analysis on the organizations and their
capability will be necessary.
The Suwon municipality decided to put the safety promotion
in the community on the one of the top priorities of 21 centuries
agenda since the latter part of 1998. The municipality requested
Ajou University School of Medicine to perform preliminary
pilot studies to identify and prioritize the injury problems
in Suwon in 1999. As a result of these studies, the city of
Suwon accepted a long-term project called ‘Suwon Safe
Community’.
8) The Centre supports those responsible at the community
level to utilize appropriate indicators to evaluate community
processes, effects of change and injury rates.
There are several ways of evaluating a program and since
results of a program is influenced by the plans and the quality
of the process, evaluation on the plans and process is as
important as an evaluation on the results The evaluation should
be based on the scientific evidence of the program, such as
appropriateness of the process, effectiveness of the result
and the long term effect.
In evaluating a community program, there are various aspects
such as formative evaluation, process evaluation, impact evaluation,
outcome evaluation, and so forth. At the preparation stage
of the project, however, through a preliminary investigation,
a formative evaluation was in execution, and for each detailed
programs, outcome evaluations were determined. In the outcome
evaluations, indicators such as injury frequencies, hospital
visits related to injuries, clinical outcomes, or change of
life quality were in usage.
9) The Centre disseminates their experiences both at national
and international levels.
International Support: The Center hosted The First Asian
Regional Conference on Safe Communities in Suwon, Korea, from
25-27 February 2002. More than 300 participants from 29 countries
participated actively in the conference. The conference was
a great event for participants to share experiences and to
plan further collaboration in the field of injury prevention
and to support the Safe community movement internationally
and in Asian Region specifically. The Director of the Center
was Chairperson of the Scientific Committee of the Conference
and many professionals were also members of the organizing
and scientific committees.
National Support: One more city, Seoul Metropolitan City
has already launched their project of Safe Community Promotion
since March 2004. Some other Cities have already interest
in Safe Community Project. The Center expected the Jeju city
and the Province of Jeju would launch their project next year,
2005.
10) The Centre reports on their Safe Community activities
and research efforts.
Since 1999, the Center has continued to make her efforts
on applying science into community practice. The Center reported
annually the injury prevention programs of the communities
that they served. The Center also published scientific papers
at many academic articles in Korean language. Some key papers
are followings:
Joon Pil Cho, Kyung Won Paek, Hyun Jong Song, “Prevalence
and Associated Factors of Falls in the Elderly Community”
Korean Journal of Preventive Medicine 2001
Joon Pil Cho, Jae Woo Kim, “Emergency Department Clinical
Evaluation of Child Hand Injuries” Journal of the Korean
Society of Emergency Medicine 2001
Joon Pil Cho, Hyun Jong Song, Kyung Won Paek, “Child
Car Seat Use and Related Factors”Journal of the Korean
Society of Traumatology 2002
Kyung Won Paek, Hyun Jong Song, Joon Pil Cho, “Effectiveness
of Bathroom Grab Bar to Prevent Falls in Elderly” Journal
of the Korea Gerontological Society 2002
Reports of Suwon Safe Community Programs in English had been
submitted by the Center to become a member of International
Safe Community Network in 2002. Professor Cho and Professor
Svanstrom co-edited a book “Developing Safe Communities-Two
decades of experiences“ in English with contribution
of keynote speakers at the 1st Asian Regional Conference on
Safe Communities.
Download the application report: The
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files requires Acrobat Reader, available
free from Adobe's
website
For further information contact:
Joon Pil Cho
The Center for Injury Prevention and Community Safety Promotion
5, Wonchon-dong Yeontong –Gu Ajou University
Suwon City 443 - 721
Republic of Korea
Phone: +82-31-219-6007
Fax: 82-31-219-4568
E-mail: jpcho@ajou.ac.kr
|
