Safe Kids Worldwide

Safe Kids Worldwide is focused on reducing childhood death from preventable injuries. Since the founding of Safe Kids in 1988, the work of Safe Kids has contributed to the more than 60 percent reduction in childhood unintentional injury deaths in the United States.

The reduction in the childhood death rate from unintentional injury represents more than a quarter of a million lives saved and countless injuries prevented. However, almost 35 years into our mission, we recognize more and more that preventive efforts have not always reached the children at greatest risk of unintentional injury. The causes of child injury vary according to a child’s age, sex, race, environment, geographic region, and socioeconomic status as well a child’s developmental abilities, exposure to potential hazards, and parent perceptions of both their child’s abilities and the injury risk. Younger children, boys, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, and children who live in poverty are disproportionately impacted.

Safe Kids needs to move more quickly to meet the needs of high risk and underserved populations, improve on the backbone elements of the organization, and ensure we are as strong, inclusive, and impactful as we can be.

To reach these children and their caregivers, we need to partner with experts and organizations already working in these communities, identify best practices with respect to engagement and development of messaging and programs, and build capacity and skills both internally and within our coalition network.

As a data-driven organization, we also recognize the need for applied research to better inform the new direction. We need to explore data linkage and visualization methodologies to better allow identification of high-risk groups and underserved communities. We need to meet these families where they are, understand their knowledge, perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors as they relate to child injury and its prevention, including the social and physical contexts in which they live. Armed with additional knowledge, we can then work with relevant partners and champions from those communities to develop – or modify – our messaging and programmatic approaches and advocate for policy changes at the organizational, municipal, state, and federal levels to support prevention efforts.

Ongoing organizational strategies outline below will also continue:

Research:
- Produce factsheets utilizing secondary data to describe current burden of 1) unintentional child injury overall, 2) SKW priority risk areas: child passenger safety, pedestrian safety, bicycling safety, drowning, poisoning, fire/burns and safe sleep and 3) other unintentional injuries impacting families (e.g., firearm injuries, toy injuries, sports injuries, etc.).
- Undertake additional research to inform programmatic/advocacy work and communications (e.g., focus groups, parent/caregiver surveys) around both priority risk areas and emerging issues and publish either public facing research reports and/or peer-reviewed articles.
- Identify evidence-base for programmatic, advocacy and communications activities and support development and evaluation of evidence-informed strategies.

Programs:
- Continue to support broad-based programs that protect children including sports safety; pedestrian safety; child passenger safety; television tip over prevention; medication safety; and teen passenger/driving safety.

Awareness:
- Conduct annual awareness campaigns that utilize traditional media and social media to draw the public's attention to new findings related to sports safety; pedestrian safety; child passenger safety; television tip over prevention; home safety; medication safety; and teen passenger/driving safety.
- Promote awareness of additional safety topics that impact the well-being of children throughout the year via the www.safekids.org website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Advocacy:
- Continue advocacy efforts at the local, state, and national levels to support public policy that protects children from preventable injuries.

Safe Kids Worldwide has two core competencies that differentiate the organization and contribute to our effectiveness.

1. We are able to reach millions of people directly each year through our unique grassroots network in the United States and our global partners in thirty countries. With 400 local coalitions across the United States, many of which reside in children's hospitals, Safe Kids is one of the most efficient and effective networks in existence today to reach doctors, nurses, healthcare workers, public health specialists, child care experts, and other caregivers who provide direct services and education about child injury prevention to families, parents, and caregivers.

Globally, Safe Kids member organizations work each day in thirty countries to protect children from preventable injuries. Safe Kids Worldwide is recognized globally as one of the leading organizations to help realize a day when every child is safe whether traveling by car (secure in a car seat); traveling on a bike or motorbike (wearing a helmet); or crossing the street (at a clearly marked crosswalk). Member organizations learn from each other, sharing knowledge, resources and best practices to further advance effective programs in each country.

2. We are able to broadly share key messages about protecting children from preventable injuries with parents and caregivers through sophisticated multimedia awareness campaigns.
As a trusted source for independent safety information, Safe Kids' awareness campaigns garner significant media attention, primarily through earned traditional and social media. From July 1, 2014 – June 30, 2015, our media efforts resulted in 5.3 billion impressions, including exposure in prominent outlets such as The Today Show, Fox, ABC World News Tonight, CNN and USA Today. We pair national awareness campaigns with a strong grassroots network of coalitions and partners who carry our message into their communities and our programs are evidenced-based and rigorously evaluated annually.

While much progress has been made to protect children from preventable injuries, Safe Kids Worldwide is focused on reducing rates of child death even further domestically and globally. Since the founding of Safe Kids in 1988, the work of Safe Kids has contributed to the more than 60 percent reduction in childhood unintentional injury deaths in the United States.

In the United States, we are actively seeking funding partnership to further our program efforts to address:
a. Teen Driving – 2,138 teens die each year as passengers and drivers in cars.
b. Home Safety – 2500 children die at home each year from preventable injuries.
c. Safe Sleep – 1000 infants die each year from unsafe sleeping environments.
d. Water Safety – 1000 children die each year from drowning.
e. Fire Safety – Hundreds of children die each year from fires, burns and smoke inhalation.
f. Sports Safety – Millions of children sustain serious sports injuries each year that are preventable.

Globally, we are actively seeking funding partnerships to further our program efforts to address:
a. Road Safety – estimated 250,000 children die each year from road injuries as passengers and pedestrians.
b. Water Safety – estimated 170,000 children die each year from drowning.