Photo: Magnus Zeisig
Country: Sweden
Population: Sweden 1999 – 8 861 000; Stockholm County 1999 – 1
803 400
Program started: Has taken form successively since the mid-1980s
"WHO Designation" year: 2000
Identity: The Centre for Safety Promotion (CSP) is a part of the
Stockholm County Council and is affiliated with Karolinska Institutet (KI). The areas of
operation for this resource centre include the study and prevention of non-intentional
injuries as well as those caused by violence. The work combines the principles of public
health practices and research. The approach applied links praxis with theory. While all
staff members are employees of the Stockholm County Council (the public authority
responsible for the planning and dispensing of medical and health care services), most are
also members of the KI research group on injury prevention and safety promotion. The
injury prevention unit emerged at the end of the 1980s as a Stockholm County Council-based
injury prevention program and was expanded in the early 1990s to encompass violence.
During the early 1990s, public health activities within the County Council were
strengthened by the establishment of a field organisation based around the local health
care districts which were given operational responsibility covering, among other things,
injury prevention. This resulted in successive shifts and changes in CSP’s
activities. From formerly being a more operative and directly interventive body, the
CSP’s tasks have become increasingly consultative and supportive. The CSP is part of
the Stockholm County Council’s broad Stockholm Center of Public Health (formerly
"Community Medicine") which is responsible for the county’s public health
issues. Within the Center of Public Health, the CSP is directly located in the Unit for
Social Medicine, an affiliation which has been vital for CSP’s scientific and
practical development. An important aspect of this location is CSP’s co-operation
with the WHO Collaborating Centre on Community Safety Promotion also at the Department of
Public Health Sciences, Division of Social Medicine, Karolinska Institutet.
Role: The Centre’s original tasks were outlined as follows:
- to describe the scope and breadth of injuries and to monitor county trends in injuries,
- to promote the development of methods and approaches to the prevention of accidental and
violence-related injuries that are suitable for application within the county,
- to disseminate knowledge about injuries and injury prevention work to relevant actors
within the county and to contribute to the establishment and maintenance of local injury
programs throughout the county.
The focus has subsequently been expanded to include evaluation, evidence-based
prevention, and health economics, especially injury costs. Further, reflecting a
philosophical shift in the focus, the English title was changed from the Section for
Injury Prevention to the Centre for Safety Promotion (CSP). The main thrusts of the
unit’s resources are aimed at injury prevention and safety promotion within the
following subject areas:
- Children and young people
- The elderly Violence
- Occupational, traffic, and product safety
- Health and injury economics
- Injury epidemiology, surveillance, and analysis
Suicide and self-directed injuries fall under other programs within the Stockholm
County Council. However, some of the epidemiological studies at the CSP include data on
suicide.
Aims of the Centre are:
To contribute to the promotion of safety and to a reduction in the frequency and
severity of injury by the application of scientific multi-disciplinary approaches. First
and foremost, this takes the form of providing services for the county administration,
municipalities, and other county-based organisations, related to injury data, methods,
knowledge, and dissemination in the field of injury prevention and safety promotion. As an
integral part of this mission, CSP has also adopted as part of its role the support of and
participation in national and international injury prevention efforts.
Current safety promotion activities
Nacka
An example of practical work where CSP facilitates community-based strategic planning
is in the municipality of Nacka in collaboration with the Southeastern Stockholm Health
Region. This municipality has approximately 70,000 inhabitants. Nacka is also the first
municipality in the County of Stockholm to apply for designation as a member of the WHO
Safe Community Network (November 2000).
Upplands Väsby
The municipality of Upplands Väsby is increasingly active in injury preventive work. A
multi-sectoral group has been established which plans and designs the prevention efforts.
From the beginning, the focus was on child safety and is now expanding to include safety
among the elderly, traffic and in the future, and violence. In the field of child safety,
there has been a focus on safety in pre-schools and playgrounds. Routines for safety
rounds have been developed, and representatives for child safety have been chosen at each
pre-school who are to evaluate the safety in the pre-school on a regular basis. These
representatives are trained by the CSP.
Plans are underway in several other municipalities in the County to apply eventually
for designation as a Safe Community.
Mobilisation strategies involve initiation of and support by CSP to
the following coalitions and organisations:
- Operation Kvinnofrid (Peace for Women) initiative
- The Bicycle Helmet Initiative
- The Elderly Centre
- The Stockholm County Traffic Safety Federation
- The Elderly Safety in Traffic Board
- Local health care district boards Barnombudsmannen (Children’s Ombudsman)
Supporting the involvement of health care organisations
The CSP operates organisationally within the health care sector and works integrally
with the hospital emergency wards in the promotion of injury surveillance systems and
processing of data. The difficulties associated with motivating hospital policy makers and
hospital staff to conduct data collection have been long recognised.
- On-going injury surveillance is operational at three hospital emergency
departments under the direction of the CSP; support is given to Nacka and other
municipalities in their injury surveillance in primary care and community health centres.
- Safe Seniors in Sundbyberg mobilised the existing home help services, sections
of the health care sector, and other municipal services as actors in the prevention of
fall injuries among the elderly.
- Operation Kvinnofrid is a county-wide multi-agency initiative aimed at reducing
violence against women, increasing awareness of the mechanisms of the violence, and
emphasising the responsibility of public authorities in this field. There are
multi-sectoral components of the initiative – such as periodic public campaigns
– as well as intra-sectoral components. Within the health care sector, training and
educational programs are the main thrust of Operation Kvinnofrid. The aim is to improve
the encounter between physically and sexually abused women and their children and the
health care system, regardless of where and when the women first seek medical assistance.
- In the child health care centres routines have been established for providing
information on child safety. This takes place during the regular health controls and
immunisation services. CSP provides up-dated information on child safety interventions to
these centres.
Disseminating experiences both nationally and internationally
Several members of the CSP staff teach on various undergraduate, master’s and
doctoral levels, including for the Ph.D. courses "Safety Promotion Research-A Public
Health Approach to Accident and Injury Prevention" and "The Global Burden of
Injury – Analysis of International Patterns and their Determinants as a Basis for
Improved Prevention Policy and Planning" as well a "NIVA International Course on
Safety Research".
Publications - including The Injury Bulletin (Skadejournalen) -
produced at the CSP are intended for dissemination both locally, nationally and
internationally (with the exception of those exclusively in Swedish).
A network of guest and international researchers working in the fields of
injury surveillance, injury prevention, and the macro-determinants of violence visit the
CSP on a periodic basis. Channels for exchange among Swedish researchers and international
researchers include The Safety Promotion Research Group and the WHO Collaborating Centre
on Community Safety Promotion.
Staff:
Ragnar Andersson (Director, on leave)
Inger Bellman (Administrative Assistant)
Cathrine Höglund (Injury Surveillance)
Lars-Gunnar Hörte (Injury Surveillance)
Aime Laur (Health Economics)
Karen Leander (Violence, Children)
Anne Reimers (Statistical Analysis)
Siv Sadigh (Injuries among the Elderly)
Helle Molsted-Alvesson (On leave, Children)
Centre for Safety Promotion
Social Medicine
Norrbacka
SE-171 76 Stockholm SWEDEN
Fax: +46 8 517 77930
Download the application report:
csp.pdf
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