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Promoting Child Safety with Computers |
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From Johns Hopkins Children's Center: Computer technology that provides parents with customized safety information can be an effective way to help their children avoid injury, according to a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. We have effective ways to prevent injuries, like smoke detectors and car safety seats, but many families, especially low income families, remain unprotected," said Andrea Carlson Gielen, ScD, ScM, lead author of the study and director of the Center for Injury Research & Policy at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. The participants in the "Safety in Seconds" program used a computer kiosk set up for parents in the emergency department of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center to answer a series of questions about their children, their own experiences and personal beliefs about safety. After parents complete the questionnaire, the computer generated a personalized safety report for them based on their responses. According to the results, the parents who received the customized safety reports scored significantly higher on knowledge of smoke alarm use and safe poison storage; they were also more likely to report correct child safety seat use. Ninety-three percent of the intervention parents said they read at least some of the safety report while 57 percent said they read the entire report. Lower-income parents who read the tailored reports were more likely to store poisons in the home safely compared to the control group.
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