The University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center (UNC IPRC) was created in 1987 as one of five original “centers of excellence” funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  An interdisciplinary center, UNC IPRC’s mission is: “to build the field of injury prevention and control through a combination of interdisciplinary scholarly approaches to research, intervention, and evaluation – as well as through the training of the next generation of researchers and practitioners.” 

The Center addresses injury and violence problems through epidemiological research and application of research findings for development of preventive interventions.  UNC IPRC emphasizes injuries in violence, including child maltreatment, youth violence, and domestic violence; residential environments; sports and recreational injury; occupational injury; and the development of injury control infrastructure through surveillance activities, training and the translation of research into practice.  

Over the past 20 years, the Center has conducted groundbreaking research and converted it into practical, effective solutions for preventing violence and injury.  Selected successes have included LONGSCAN, the most long-lasting longitudinal study of child abuse and neglect in the U.S.; research on the forces associated with concussions in football and hockey; occupational injury research addressing both young workers, workplace violence, and the training of military personnel;  research on home safety including documenting risks for fires and developing efforts to reduce falls through innovative approaches to use pharmacists as well dissemination research focused on fall prevention through senior centers.  Investigators are just beginning a new statewide initiative to reduce the incidence of abusive head trauma.

In addition, the Center has done extensive work on infrastructure development, including  PREVENT, a violence prevention training program for practitioners that emerged out of the National Training Initiative for Injury and Violence Prevention—a joint initiative of SAVIR and the State and Territorial Injury Prevention Directors Association (STIPDA).  And, we have broadened our reach to include numerous collaborations in the global arena aimed at documenting injury and violence problems and improving local infrastructure through training.

University of North Carolina Injury Prevention Research Center