Injury prevention evaluations

• Latrobe Safe Communities evaluation
• City of Hume Safe Living Program evaluation
• Falls prevention for older residents of the City of Whitehorse (RCT)
• Farm Safety kit and training evaluation
• Evaluation of the 'Up and about falls prevention program'

Product-related injury

• Consumer product safety research program
• Childhood poisoning research and prevention
• Database of expertise in product safety and safe product design
• Poisoning prevention-access by children

Sports and recreational injury prevention

• The epidemiology of sports injury in Victoria
• A comprehensive epidemiological study of sports injury in the Latrobe Valley (linked to the Latrobe Safe Communities program)
• Development of a standardised sports injury data collection methodology
• The epidemiology of sports injuries presenting to Sports Medicine Clinics
• Survey of safety practices of sporting clubs and centres in the City of Hume (related to the Safe Living program)
• A survey of sporting and recreational injuries presenting to General Practice
• Sports injury countermeasures series:

-baseball and softball
-cricket
-equestrian injuries
-running
-alpine skiing
-cross country skiing
-snowboarding
-netball
-in-line skating
-soccer
-lawn bowls

Occupational injury prevention

• Ballarat region occupational injury prevention project
• Manual handling injuries in manufacturing industries - a focus on women

CURRENT ROAD SAFETY RESEARCH PROGRAM

Road User Safety

• Young driver research program
• Learner driver experience and crashes in the first year of driving
• Guidelines for learner drivers
• Night-time crash problem of young drivers
• Older pedestrian road crossing behaviour
• Older road user strategy
• 'Walk-with-Care' update
• Crash risks of road user groups
• Casualty crash risks for motorcycle riders in Victoria
• Seat belt wearing rates in Victoria during 1994
• Promotion of public breath testing
• Economic evaluation of alcohol screening devices
• Situational factors relating to drink driving
• Promotion of public breath testing
• Use of new breathtesters in rural areas
• Benefit-cost evaluation of moving mode radar for speed enforcement
• Research on the speed camera program
• Evaluation of speed zone changes
• Benefit-cost analysis of the deployment of laser speed detection devices in rural
• Victoria Evaluation of the deployment of laser speed detection devices in Melbourne
• Evaluation of traffic safety education in schools
• Tanker safety review

Road and traffic engineering safety

• Evaluation of the TAC Accident Black Spot program
• Environmental countermeasures for alcohol-related pedestrian crashes
• Multi-action pedestrian program in the City of Darebin and City of Stonnington
• Effectiveness of countermeasures for crashes into fixed road objects
• Safety performance of major tourists routes-pilot study
• Benefits and costs of road shoulder sealing
• Perceptual countermeasures

Vehicle safety

• Consumer advice on vehicle crash performance and correlation between New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) and real crashes
• Vehicle crashworthiness and year of manufacture
• SAFECAR - the new car safety feature rating system
• Optimum car safety
• Occupant protection research
• Head injury mechanisms and potential savings
• Commodore airbag effectiveness
• Airbag effectiveness generally
• Side impact research
• Development and testing of energy absorbing rear underrun barriers for heavy vehicles
• Petrol road tanker safety project

Road safety systems analysis

• Case control study of single vehicle crashes
• Factors affecting TAC claims injury severity
• Case control study of motorcycle crashes
• On-going system to monitor and evaluate countermeasures
• Evaluation of a tool to measure police effectiveness
• Preliminary investigation of increases in the 1995 road toll in Victoria
• Driver demerit points and crashes

Facilitation and evaluation of community-based injury prevention programs

MUARC has supported both of the Victorian WHO Safe Communities (City of Hume Safe Living program and Latrobe Valley Better Health program) from their inception, planning and establishment phases several years ago up to the present. The Centre has also been responsible for the impact and outcome evaluations of both programs (see MUARC's website publications list for evaluation reports).

MUARC produced draft guidelines for the wider implementation of community based injury prevention in 1996 which will be finalised after the completion of the current evaluation phases of the two programs. MUARC is developing a method to evaluate the institutionalisation of successful community intervention programs.

Surveillance of injuries

Hospital emergency department surveillance system

MUARC has primary responsibility for the centralisation and analysis of injury data from hospital emergency departments through the Victorian Injury Surveillance System (VISS) which began as a paediatric collection in 1988. The original VISS database, which collected data from 5 hospitals has been progressively replaced by the new system (the Victorian Emergency Minimum Database) covering 25 public hospitals which has collected data on more than 200,000 cases of injury since its inception in October 1995.

Other surveillance data

MUARC also holds data collections on injury deaths from 1989 (supplied through the Victorian Coroners' Facilitation System), hospital admissions from 1987 (a subset of the Victorian Inpatient Minimum Database collected by the Department of Human Services) and General Practitioner presentations from one rural region over 12 months (1994-95). In the latter case MUARC developed an easy-to-use data collection computer program which is available, at a small cost, to all General Practitioners. A similar system has been developed and used successfully to collect data on sports injuries at major events. All these data are used to identify injury problems, support research into causality and, most importantly, to underpin the development of injury prevention strategies and support their implementation and evaluation.

Sports data

MUARC initiated a two-year study commenced in August 1996 to conduct injury surveillance at five large metropolitan Melbourne sports medicine centres. It is anticipated that 8,000 new cases of sports injury will be treated at these centres during a 12 month period and all of these will be recorded in the surveillance system. More than 730 cases of new sports injuries were recorded in the first month. The study will yield high quality epidemiological information about sports injuries to complement other epidemiological data.

Publications and information dissemination

Information service: A no-charge information service (predominantly on hospital emergency department data outputs) is also offered to industry, the media and interested organisations and professionals by MUARC through VISS. This service responded to 360 requests for data analyses and interpretation in 1996. The main requests related to burns and scalds, dog bites, drowning, falls, poisoning and sports injuries.

'Hazard': Information on injury derived from these databases is disseminated by MUARC through the VISS quarterly publication 'Hazard' (also published on MUARC's website)

MUARC research reports: MUARC usually self-publishes about 20 substantial research reports each year which are available free or on a cost-recovery basis (over 100 reports are on the cumulative list). The 23 research reports published in 1996 covered a variety of topics including pedestrian safety, dairy farm injuries, motorcycle injuries, drink driving countermeasures, vehicle crashworthiness ratings and sports injury countermeasure reviews. (A full list and ordering details are on MUARC's website).

International commitments

Study visits: In 1996 MUARC hosted two overseas visitors for extended periods (one from New Zealand and the other from Scotland) and one of the Centre's staff spent 4 months studying consumer safety in the Netherlands and United States on a Churchill Fellowship.

MUARC also encourages visitors to the Centre to discuss issues of mutual interest. In 1996 the Centre hosted the delegates to the Third International Conference on Injury Prevention and Control and the Fifth International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles who chose MUARC as their Technical Site Visit. MUARC was visited in 1996 by injury prevention personnel from Germany, Norway, The Netherlands, England, Northern Ireland, USA, Canada, South Africa, and China and this is typical of the range of international visitors that come to the Centre in any given year.

MUARC organised the 1997 visit of Professor Leif Svanstrom to Safe Communities (established and potential) in Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Conference organisation and participation: MUARC is continuously active in the organisation of injury prevention and road safety conferences and seminars at a variety of levels - national community-based injury prevention network meetings and other seminars, the national injury prevention and international injury prevention and road safety conferences.

For example, staff were heavily involved in organising the first national community-based injury prevention network meeting in the Shire of Bulla in early 1991 and MUARC hosted the second meeting in December 1991. MUARC also assisted the organisation of the First National Conference on Injury Prevention and Control held in Sydney in 1994.

MUARC's staff gave substantial time commitment to the organisation of the two major international conferences which were held in Melbourne during 1996. The Third International Conference on Injury Prevention and Control was held in February and The Fifteenth International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles (ESV) in May. Centre staff were involved in the various Committees to support these conferences. For example, for the Third International Conference on Injury Prevention and Control Conference, MUARC staff served as members of the Host Committee and the Scientific Program Committee and chaired the Local Arrangements Committee and the Melbourne Declaration Working Party. MUARC also organised the community-based injury prevention session at this Conference.

MUARC staff were involved in organising two other conferences in 1996 (serving on the Scientific Program Committees of the National Farm Safety Conference and the Fifth International Safe Communities Conference) and gave 62 presentations (including 5 keynote addresses) at local, national and international conferences, seminars and forums. Their participation resulted in 37 papers published in Conference Proceedings in 1996.

MUARC is currently assisting the organisation of the Second National Conference on Injury Prevention and Control to be held in Melbourne in February 1998, in association with the International Safety in Action Conference.

Educational activities

In February 1996, the Centre co-ordinated an International Short Course on Injury Epidemiology and Prevention, at which thirteen countries and most Australian States were represented. Seven members of staff presented lectures at the course which was conducted by injury prevention professionals from Australia, India and the United States. This largely self-funded venture was a collaborative effort between MUARC and the WHO Collaborating Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Dehli. This is the third short course on injury prevention that MUARC has organised for injury prevention researchers and practitioners. The fourth short course will be held in February 1998, in association with the international 'Safety in Action' Conference.

In 1997 MUARC introduced a new subject 'Injury Epidemiology and Prevention' in the Masters of Public Health Course conducted at Monash University. In addition, staff are regularly involved in teaching of graduate and undergraduate students in medicine, epidemiology and engineering courses.

Staff

More than 50 full- and part-time research and support staff
Professions: Trained researchers and statisticians from a variety of disciplines e.g. medicine, epidemiology, engineering, psychology and social sciences.

For further information contact:

Erin Cassell
Monash University Accident Research Centre
Wellington Rd
CLAYTON VIC 3168
AUSTRALIA

Phone: +61 3 990 51857
Fax: +61 3 990 51858

MUARC Website