Safety Skills Training For Parents of Preschool Children

Safety Skills Training For Parents of Preschool Children

As the leading cause of death and disability in children in America, unintentional injuries are a critical public health issue. Most injuries can be prevented by parents implementing effective child safety practices. This project produced an interactive multimedia (IMM) program delivered via Internet/Intranet that taught injury prevention skills to parents of children aged 2 through 5 years, with the ultimate goal of reducing mortality and disability from unintentional injury in this population.

This project produced a comprehensive, interactive multimedia (IMM) program called Family Safety 123 to teach childhood injury prevention skills to parents of children 2 to 5 years of age. The program contained 40 high-quality video clips, each 2 to 5 minutes in length, depicting injury prevention strategies in 13 content areas: supervision, preventing airway obstructions, poison awareness, preventing burns, preventing falls, firearm safety, motor vehicle safety, pedestrian awareness, sports, playgrounds, water safety, bike safety, and other safety concerns. Each content area contained 1 to 6 videos comprised of short video presentations, modeling vignettes demonstrating desired behaviors, supportive testimonials, and suggestions for modifications to home and recreational environments. Family Safety 123 video content is derived from The Injury Prevention Program (TIPP) sheets developed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recognizes injury prevention as a primary topic for parents.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Parents of children aged 2-5 potentially were as young as 18 years old. Parents or legal guardians could potentially be as old as 65 or older.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Only English-speaking participants were accepted because the program was developed only for English speakers. All English-speaking parents of children aged 2-5 years old who wished to participate were included. Online Survey: parents under 18 years of age were excluded because we were unable to obtain parental consent online.