Injury Research ― Theories, Methods, and Approaches

Injury is recognized as a major public health issue worldwide. In most countries, injury is the leading cause of death and disability for children and young adults age 1 to 39 years. Each year in the United States, injury claims about 170,000 lives and results in over 30 million emergency room visits and 2.5 million hospitalizations. Injury is medically defined as organ/tissue damages inflicted upon oneself or by an external agent either accidentally or deliberately. Injury encompasses the undesirable consequences of a wide array of events, such as motor vehicle crashes, poisoning, burns, falls, and drowning, medical error, adverse effects of drugs, suicide and homicide. The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable growth in injury research, both in scope and in depth. To address the tremendous health burden of injury morbidity and mortality at the global level, the World Health Organization in 2000 created the Department of Injury and Violence Prevention, which has produced several influential reports on violence, traffic injury, and childhood injury. The biennial World Conference on Injury Control and Safety Promotion attracts a large international audience and has been successfully convened nine times in different countries. In the United States, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control became an independent program of the federal Centers for Disease Prevention and Control in 1997. Since then, each state health department has created an office in charge of injury prevention activities and over a dozen universities have established injury control research centers. This volume will fill an important gap in the scientific literature by providing a comprehensive and up-to-date reference resource to researchers, practitioners, and students working on different aspects of the injury problem and in different practice settings and academic fields.

Dr. Guohua Li is the Finster Professor of Epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and College of Physicians & Surgeons. A medical epidemiologist, Dr. Li is interested in research methodology and injury-related, population-based and policy-oriented studies that encompass innovative epidemiologic designs, novel biostatistical techniques, and complex data systems. Dr. Li has published over 130 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and is well known for his studies of aviation crashes and the role of alcohol in injury causation and trauma outcomes. A Guggenheim Fellow and a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, Dr. Li is the recipient of the Kenneth Rothman Epidemiology Prize (1999) and the John Paul Stapp Award (2009). Dr. Susan P. Baker is the Professor of Health Policy and Management and the founding director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is widely recognized as one of the founders of the scientific discipline of injury epidemiology and prevention and is credited for developing the Injury Severity Score, a simple and effective tool for measuring the severity of multiple trauma that has been used worldwide by clinicians and researchers. She has authored over 300 publications, including the influential text Injury Fact Book, 1st and 2nd editions. Prof. Baker has received numerous awards, including the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health and Higher Education and the Excellence in Research Award of the American Public Health Association.