February, 2011 ~ Member Update

Dear SAVIR Members,

For my first member update, I’m delighted to share lots of exciting news about our accomplishments to date. It is an honor to be serving as President with the dedicated group of Board and Committee members who are making things happen.

National Conference

With less than 9 weeks to go, our national meeting is shaping up to be a “must attend” event for injury researchers and practitioners. The theme, Progress through Partnerships is very appropriate because this is a joint meeting with Safe States Alliance and the CDC Core state injury grantees. In addition to the great line up of professional development and skill building opportunities, SAVIR will host a student meet and greet session and a business meeting. These are great opportunities for you to learn more about the organization, provide input, and get involved in helping SAVIR’s continued growth and development. There is still time to register, so please visit the conference website https://m360.safestates.org/event.aspx?eventID=20417.

Health Care Reform

SAVIR has been actively promoting the inclusion of injury and violence prevention into health care reform. A National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council was created, chaired by the Surgeon General http://www.healthcare.gov/center/councils/nphpphc/about/index.html. They are charged with providing leadership and coordination at the federal level for prevention and with developing a National Prevention and Health Promotion Strategy (Strategy)by March 23, 2011.Stakeholders were invited to submit written comments on the draft Strategy and to participate in a face to face meeting in Washington, DC. With the help of the Advocacy and Policy Committee, SAVIR responded to both of these opportunities.

We communicated the importance of focusing on “disease AND INJURY” and “health AND SAFETY” in the public discourse on prevention and on the critical role for research in the government’s new national strategy. A group of 25 advisors has just been named to contribute to this initiative, and SAVIR will be reaching out to them in the next few months. A copy of SAVIR’s written comments will be available on the website soon.

New Partnerships

SAVIR was a co-sponsor of the Congressional Briefing Addressing the Intersection: Preventing Violence and Promoting Healthy Eating and Active Living held on Capitol Hill earlier this month. This event was sponsored by Prevention Institute in partnership with Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Barbara Lee. It was a standing room only event, with about 100 people in attendance, including many legislative aides and advisors, as well as representatives from other professional organizations such as APHA, Safe States Alliance, and the Decade of Action for Road Safety. We were able to help shine a light on the importance of research in building the evidence base for violence prevention as well as the need to have injury prevention professionals involved in efforts to promote “SAFE AND active living”

We have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Campaign for Public Health Foundation (CPH) to partner on creating an injury prevention fact sheet that will be widely distributed as part of the CPH’s overall “Where is Public Health?” campaign http://www.cphfoundation.org/publications.html. The CPH seeks to educate the public, the media and policy makers about the significant role public health plays in the U.S. health system. We are joining several other organizations in this effort, including Safe States Alliance and the Home Safety Council. One dissemination strategy for the new fact sheet is a Congressional Briefing on injury prevention that is being planned for the spring.

National Public Health Week

SAVIR will be an active participant in APHA’s National Public Health Week (NPHW) events celebrating injury prevention, which will take place April 4-10. As you may know, NPHW is focused on the theme “Safety is No Accident”, and it falls during the week we will be gathering in Iowa for our conference. Stay tuned for more news on how we will celebrate at the conference. If you will not be with us in Iowa, we encourage you to organize or participate in your local NPHW injury prevention activities. The website http://www.nphw.org/nphw11/first1.htm will have toolkits and other materials to help you.

In Closing

Please help keep SAVIR invigorated and relevant. Encourage your colleagues and students to join. Sign up for a committee (http://www.savirweb.org/content/index.php?pid=19). Send us your thoughts on how this professional association can better serve your needs and how we can collectively strengthen injury control research and practice. Hope to see you in April!

Best regards,

Andrea C. Gielen, ScD, ScM
President, SAVIR
Professor and Director
Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health