Getting Serious About Injuries

As you’ll see in this week’s Health Politics program, injury is the number one killer of Americans under the age of 45. At first, that might seem confusing because many think of injuries as sprained ankles during sports or broken bones from falling off a bike -- which obviously aren’t fatal. And we hear so much about cancer and heart attacks, so surely those kill more people than injuries, right? Wrong -- Americans experience about 50 million injuries a year, which cause 150,000 deaths and cost us $117 billion.

What are injuries? According to Research!America, injuries can be unintentional or deliberate. Most are predictable and preventable. And examples include motor vehicle crashes, falls, drownings, burns, poisonings, homicides, suicides and sexual assaults.

We should all take notice of the fact that most injuries are predictable and preventable. It just doesn’t make sense that they cause so much death and disability.

Public health experts say building awareness should be our first step toward prevention, then real change will come when we begin to modify our behaviors. This means always buckling our seatbelts, wearing bike helmets, installing and maintaining smoke alarms, and not getting behind the wheel after drinking alcohol.

Easy enough, right? Please comment below if you have other suggestions of how we can take simple steps – and even not so simple ones, if necessary – to prevent injuries.