Issues of public health rarely have a stationary status, instead shifting to reflect both cultural values and new information. This is illustrated by new statistics on the number of injuries and fatalities in children who have been in a car crash. The information, presented in the New York Times, indicates that the celebrated switch at one year from having a child go from a rear-facing car seat to a front-facing car seat may be too soon.
In fact, for children younger than two, being rear facing increases the likelihood of surviving a car crash by 75%, according to a study done at the University of Virginia. This huge difference in the survival of young children based on having a rear-facing seat suggests that it is an important safety feature in children this old, not just under one.
After receiving the information that this was the case, additional research was conducted to find the physiological basis for this problem. Based on the developmental pattern of the human spinal cord, the impact of a car crash will be much greater until the child reaches around two years of age.
However, despite this information, a huge challenge is convincing parents that this is a big enough issue to warrant a change in what has been, for many families, a traditional pattern of aging and car-safety. This is where the connection to policy comes into play. In addition to ad campaigns informing parents of the new changes, policy makers are in the process of mandating that manufacturers of car seats only suggest that children over two be placed in front-facing seats.
This is an issue not only facing the United States, but many others as well. One of the countries at the forefront of developing solutions is Sweden, where any child under the age of 4 must be in a rear-facing seat, and which also has the lowest child fatality rate in car crashes of any country. Based on using other countries as examples and spreading safe policies, the United States can help citizens change their own behavior.
I think that this is so important, and I think this was really interesting that you mentioned this Laura. It seems to me that being involved in public health would probably provide for just as much frustration as hope. This seems like such a simple problem- just have all children under 2 be required to have rear facing car seats because that is what the statistics say! But then to implement that is an entirely different story, due to the fact that people have so many other things to focus on! I think that sometimes it is not even ignorance that leads to misplacement of attention... I think it is a struggle of what to remind people to focus on- because every culture and region would have different tragedies and needs- and people can only remember so many things and after a while, warnings fall on deaf ears if there is too many of them. I really hope that this situation sees improvement in the future!
ReplyDeleteI found this article very interesting. I was also surprised at the findings of the research done, but I think my shock proves an important point. That is, many people are unaware of the health benefits of rear facing car seats and base their car-seat choice off of tradition rather than statistics. This goes along with what we were talking about in class this week--attempting to figure out WHY people do the things that they do, and then formulating an effective plan to improve that behavior. I think in this case the idea of a switch to front facing car seats after the age of one has been tradition for so long, people rarely even consider other options. Therefore, in order to produce effective change, we are facing a cultural tradition of sorts that dates back generations. This is one of the major barriers to effective change in public health. If we can break this barrier and make people see the benefits to adapting new traditions, and the problems with old traditions, we can produce effective change. I think that education is key in producing this change. It will not be easy to spread the word, but educating the public with product ads and things of that sort will be a good start to improving the problem of child death in accidents.
ReplyDelete