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Studies A-Z > K > Keeping Children Safe
A multi-centre case-control study to investigate why children under five have accidents in their home.
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Falls, poisoning and thermal injuries are the most common injuries resulting in hospital admission and Emergency Department (ED) use in children aged 0-4 years. Each year, more than 241,000 under-fives attend EDs in the UK and more than 22,000 are admitted to hospital in England following a fall, poisoning or thermal injury. The cost of these ED attendances alone exceeds £17 million per year. It is estimated that 90 per cent of severe injuries in this age group are potentially preventable.
Funded by a £2 million, five-year National Institute for Health Research Programme grant, this case-control study aims to identify parental practices and behaviours (eg use of stair gates, cupboard locks, teaching young children safety rules) that are effective in protecting young children against falls, poisonings and thermal injuries.
Over a four-year period, a total of 950 cases will be recruited from the ED and wards at Queens Medical Centre. Cases will be children under five with a fall, poisoning or scald injury and whose parents agree to participate. We will recruit controls (children who have not had an injury) from the GP of the case child, and they will be matched by age and gender.
Over the same period, we will recruit 3794 controls – four controls for every case. If a child from your practice attends ED, we will contact you to ask for help in recruiting controls. This will provide the study team with essential data to help them develop effective and cost-effective interventions to help reduce injuries in the home.
This study is soon opening and is supported by PCRN EMSY. Funding is available to pay practice staff costs incurred in helping with the study. However, we cannot anticipate which practices we will need to approach as this will depend on the cases that are recruited to the study.