Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting
Date Submitted: Oct 24, 2024
Date Accepted: Feb 10, 2025
Evidence of interventions for the prevention of unintentional injuries: scoping review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death and disability among young children. Preventive strategies for unintentional injuries are mainly based on surveillance data and identifying risk factors.
Objective:
This study aimed to review and synthesize published literature that determined the effectiveness of interventions for preventing unintentional injuries among children.
Methods:
The methodological framework was supported by The Joanna Briggs Institute Reviewer’s Manual – Methodology for JBI Scoping Reviews as well as the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) guidelines. The inclusion criteria for the studies in the review were unintentional injuries in children, interventions to prevent injuries, a brief description of the intervention and the outcome, and articles published in a peer-reviewed journal and written in English.
Results:
Twenty-one papers were included in the review following the systematic search of key databases such as Web of Science, PubMed-MEDLINE, Scopus, ScienceDirect and grey literature between July 2013 and May 2023. Of the 21 papers, 16 were randomised controlled trials, four were nonrandomised controlled trials, and one was a mixed-method study. The findings of the review showed that interventions, either as a single measure – video-based teaching, testimonial story-based teaching, health education, storybook reading or in combination – knowledge quiz and simulation test, module-based teaching along with personal counselling, and teaching with the help of video and poster – have shown a considerable decline in the number and severity of injuries. The studies identified various target populations, including children and adolescents between zero and 19 years old.
Conclusions:
The review results indicate the need to plan, implement, and reinforce preventive measures and techniques to reduce unintentional injuries among children. They can also serve as a useful indicator for policymakers.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.