InjuryPreventionCenter.com the Rainbow Injury Prevention Center
Title
University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital - Rainbow Injury Prevention Center
Description
Excerpted from the website description:
- Rainbow Injury Prevention Center, a nonprofit organization formed by University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, is designed to share creative ideas, resources and information with all members of the Greater Cleveland community. The Center's resources include a lending library of health and safety information and access to specialists in a wide variety of injury prevention areas
Languages
English
About Us
Unintentional injury is the leading cause of death for children over the age of one. Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital is nationally renowned for its leading-edge clinical services and compassionate, child-oriented environment of care, but our commitment to children and families does not stop at our front doors. Because children’s safety is vital to their overall health and wellbeing, the hospital maintains an array of injury prevention programs under the umbrella of the Rainbow Injury Prevention Center.
The Center’s mission is three fold: 1) to work directly with children and families through education and outreach to decrease injury risk and improve wellbeing, 2) to share creative ideas, resources and information with all members of the Greater Cleveland community interested in protecting children, and 3) to advance the body of knowledge in unintentional injury prevention research.
What We Do
Advocacy Because we all have a responsibility to speak up and let our voices be heard on issues we care about, the Rainbow Injury Prevention Center works with local, state and national legislators to advance the health and safety of children and families. The Center also partners on grassroots advocacy campaigns with members of our various coalitions and the Greater Cleveland community by providing people with education and information on key issues and arming them with the information they need to be effective advocates. Our efforts have included campaigns to improve Ohio’s weak child restraint law, advocacy to strengthen the state’s graduated drivers’ licensing requirements, and working with local municipalities to enact ordinances related to seat belt use, bicycle helmet use, and smoke detector use.
Partnerships The Rainbow Injury Prevention Center is lead agency for the Greater Cleveland Safe Kids/Safe Communities Coalition. The Safe Kids Coalition is the regional chapter of the National Safe Kids Campaign, an organization dedicated to preventing unintentional childhood injuries. Safe Communities is a state-funded program designed to reduce risks associated with motor vehicle crashes through programs to increase seat belt use and reduce speeding, reckless and aggressive driving. As lead agency for these coalitions, Rainbow has a network of more than 200 community partner agencies and organizations working together to reduce unintentional injuries.
Programs The Rainbow Injury Prevention Center has programs, information, and access to specialists in a wide array of injury prevention areas, including:
child passenger safety bicycle and pedestrian safety traffic safety safe driving programs for the two highest risk groups—teens and seniors seat belt promotion unintentional firearm injuries fire safety youth sports safety poison prevention home safety playground safety Regional Child Passenger Safety Program The Rainbow Injury Prevention Center operates a grant-funded Regional Child Passenger Safety Program that oversees CPS activities in five counties and trains new National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-certified CPS technicians. Rainbow offers a free Car Seat Fit Stop, where parents can have their car seats checked for correct installation, selection, and recall, and also offers the following CPS programs:
low-cost car seat distribution classes for income-qualified families infant seat classes for expectant parents car seat check up events throughout a multi-county region
Traffic Safety Program Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among children. Creating a safe environment for kids means addressing all of the risk areas that impact the health and wellbeing of our community’s children. As a result, we venture into some nontraditional areas for a children’s hospital, like DUI reduction programs and senior driving workshops. We want our children—and everyone who is important in a child’s life—to make it home safely.
The Rainbow Injury Prevention Center is the lead agency for the Cuyahoga County DUI Task Force and the Speed, Reckless and Aggressive Driving Reduction Task Force, which are comprised of local law enforcement agencies, judges, prosecutors, political leaders, businesses, schools and community members that work together to reduce drunk and drugged driving and improve traffic safety through a combination of community education and enforcement efforts. More than 30 law enforcement member agencies work together on targeted enforcement campaigns, share equipment and conduct training to improve officers’ traffic safety enforcement skills.
Resources
Lending Library The Center's resources include a lending library of age-appropriate health and safety information and access to specialists in a wide variety of injury prevention areas, including child passenger safety, bicycle and pedestrian safety, unintentional firearm injuries, driving safety programs, fire safety, youth sports safety, and poison prevention. Resources are available free of charge to members of the Greater Cleveland Safe Kids/Safe Communities Coalition. The Rainbow Injury Prevention Center offers:
low-cost resources programs-to-go information, activities, and games related to preventing unintentional injuries costumed characters (Karrie the safety belt kangaroo, McGruff teh Crime Dog, Vince and Larry the crash test dummies) statistics on motor vehicle crashes and unintentional injuries
Education The Rainbow Injury Prevention Center provides an array of educational opportunities for health care professionals, law enforcement officers, schools, children and families, and anyone interested in keeping kids safe.
Continuing education credits The Center provides continuing education credit for classes on injury prevention topics for prehospital care providers. Offerings are available both on-line and at sites throughout the Greater Cleveland area.
Child passenger safety As the lead agency for a 5-county regional child passenger safety program, the Rainbow Injury Prevention Center offers a four-day, 32-hour course that trains individuals in child passenger safety. Those who pass the course will become National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)-certified CPS technicians and will be able to assist others in proper car seat installation.
Impaired driver detection and adjudication issues The Rainbow Injury Prevention Center regularly plans, organizes and hosts trainings for police officers, prosecutors and judges concerning the detection, prosecution and adjudication of impaired driving cases. These opportunities for local audiences to learn from nationally recognized experts have improved the detection and ultimate adjudication of impaired drivers throughout Northeast Ohio. Course offerings have included Standardized Field Sobriety Tests Training, Drug Impaired Driver Detection for Patrol Officers, Designer Drugs and OVI, and Advanced Detection, Apprehension and Prosecution.
Research
Translational research with a social science spin is a cornerstone of the Rainbow Injury Prevention Center’s efforts. Center researchers work to identify and understand the environmental, economic, and psychosocial factors that serve to protect individuals and communities or heighten their risk of unintentional injury, while working to find ways to translate that knowledge into effective, testable interventions. Center staff take a population-based approach that concentrates on improving environments and conditions through a combination of research and capacity building that brings partners together in developing, testing and evaluating interventions and finding approaches that really work in reducing pediatric injuries.
The Center’s research team is dedicated to sharing results with the Greater Cleveland community and advancing the state of injury prevention research through publication in peer-reviewed journals and presentation at state and national conferences.
The Rainbow Injury Prevention Center tracks motor vehicle-related injuries throughout Cuyahoga County to identify trends and emerging issues and is actively involved in a wide array of research activities and interests, including:
examining the sociocultural, behavioral, and cognitive factors that influence ownership and storage of firearms in homes with children exploring media framing of injury prevention topics and how that framing affects public beliefs and attitudes toward issues like risky driving, motor vehicle crashes, teen driver crashes, and alcohol-related crashes measuring and exploring levels of interpersonal violence and bullying in children’s television identifying environmental and psychosocial moderators of child injury risk assessing the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of law enforcement officers related to issues like child passenger safety or impaired driving measuring the cost effectiveness of sobriety checkpoints controlled experiments comparing the efficacy of different behavioral theory-based approaches to improving teen driver safety and increasing protective behaviors like seat belt use assessing rates of seat belt use and bike helmet use in Greater Cleveland communities and calculating change over time gauging the impact of environmental modifications to improve child pedestrian safety in a high density, low socioeconomic status area
