Phase III I/UCRC Ohio State University: Center for Child Prevention Studies (CChIPS)

Ohio State University, The, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

According to recent data released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), unintentional injury is the number one cause of death for individuals between 1 - 24 years old. For these ages, car crashes were the leading cause of unintentional injury death. Despite recent improvements in car crash safety, these numbers demonstrate a need for continued research into the safety of children in car crashes and thus the continued need for the Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies (CCHiPS). CChIPS primary focus is on motor vehicle crashes. Each year in the United States, over 1,500,000 children are occupants in motor vehicle crashes with close to 1,200 children sustaining fatal injuries, while more than 169,000 children are non-fatally injured, leading to substantial loss of productivity in the young. CChIPS advances child safety through pre-competitive research and translation of engineering, behavioral and epidemiologic research findings into commercial applications, interventions, policies, and public education programs for prevention. Injury prevention involves reducing exposure to energy to levels below human tolerance limits and managing the injuries should they occur. Adult solutions are not appropriate for children who are not small adults - biomechanically, developmentally, and behaviorally and solutions need to dramatically change to accommodate growth and development. The research conducted by CChIPS is published in leading scientific and engineering journals and conferences and the results are cited as transformative regarding knowledge of how children, youth and young adults are injured and how to best protect them. The Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies (CChIPS) is the nation's only IUCRC focused on child injury prevention, with a specific emphasis on injury due to car crashes. The mission of CChIPS is to advance the safety of children, youth, and young adults by conducting research focused on their injuries and translating the findings into commercial applications, interventions, policies, and public education programs for prevention. The technical focus of the Ohio State CCHiPS site will include special emphasis on two areas: (1) crash test dummy development (2) public education and outreach. Crash test dummies are an important safety tool used by manufacturers to design and tests child restraint systems (CRS), thus it is critical to continue to improve the dummies. The main focus of the OSU site will be to continue to assist in improving the ability of the dummy to predict occupant safety, which will help lead to the development of better CRS for our children and youth. Unfortunately, the benefit from improved CRS might be lost according to research showing that up to 75% of the seats are improperly installed. The OSU CChIPS site began a public outreach and education initiative to translate research findings and to promote child passenger safety to parents and caregivers. This initiative, called ?Buckle Up With Brutus? provides proper car seat usage information through its website (http://www.buckleup.osu.edu), social media, and community events. Further research will be focused on this outreach program with a goal of reducing the misuse of CRS by parents and care givers. The CChIPS Site at OSU, housed within the Injury Biomechanics Research Center (IBRC), brings together an interdisciplinary team of engineers, anatomists, physicians, and computer modelers who focus on both mechanisms of injury and injury thresholds of the human body. Until recently, the biomechanics research community did not have a deep understanding of the injury mechanisms and response of children and young adults to violent impacts experienced during a car crash. Child and adolescent crash test dummies used to estimate the severity of injury in such populations assumed that children and young adults were smaller versions of adults, thus making it difficult to improve protection for children in automobile crashes.