Injury prevention
Injury prevention comprises measures that reduce the likelihood or severity of harm caused by acute physical trauma.
Haddon Matrix: A framework for organizing injury countermeasures across time and factors involving people, vehicles, and environments. It maps prevention options before, during, and after an injury-producing event.
Road traffic safety: The policies, designs, and practices used to prevent crashes and reduce their consequences. Road design, speed management, and restraints address common causes of severe injury.
Injury epidemiology: The study of the distribution, causes, and prevention of injuries in populations. It identifies who is injured, where, and under what circumstances.
Public health: The organized effort to protect and improve health across populations. Population-level prevention treats injuries as preventable patterns, not only isolated events.
Hierarchy of Controls: A ranked framework for controlling hazards through elimination, substitution, engineering, administration, and personal protective equipment. It prioritizes stronger hazard controls over measures that depend on individual behavior.
Occupational safety and health: The field concerned with preventing work-related injury and illness and protecting workers' health. Workplace hazard assessment and controls target injuries arising from job tasks and environments.
Injury surveillance: The ongoing collection and analysis of data about injuries and their causes. Surveillance helps detect trends and evaluate whether prevention measures change outcomes.
Safe System approach: A road-safety framework that assumes human errors occur and designs systems to prevent fatal outcomes. It shifts responsibility toward roads and vehicles that limit the consequences of mistakes.
Risk compensation: A theory that people may adjust behavior in response to perceived changes in risk. Protective measures can sometimes alter behavior, complicating estimates of their net effect.
Fall prevention: Measures that reduce falls and fall-related injuries, especially among people at elevated risk. Falls are a major preventable source of injury in homes, care settings, and workplaces.