Background Study design in the fields of basic and clinical sciences is classified generally into two categories: 1) observational; and 2) Interventional. In observational studies, the researcher just focuses on the status of the study question and describes the current status as well as measuring associations between exposures and outcomes. While, in the interventional studies, the main aim of research is the study of the intervention effects which applied on the eligible persons by researcher that could finally result in prevention and health promotion or treatment of diseases depends on applied interventions. The aim of current study is to determine the frequency of the published study designs in the fields of safety promotion and prevention of injury regarding to the continents during the last three decades (1985-2015).

Methods In this review article, all published papers in Pubmed from 1984 to 2015 in the field of safety promotion and injury prevention were studied. We used the following keywords for our search: Road traffic, burning, drowning, fall, and violence. The total number of articles in the field of injury prevention and safety promotion were 115 manuscripts from 1985 to 2015, which were assessed in terms of study design.

Results We showed that the most published papers on the safety promotion and injury prevention were conducted in America. About 67% of all studies and 78% of all intervention studies in this area have been conducted in the continent of America and Europe. Asia shared 9% of intervention studies and Iran shared 3.6% of the studies which have been conducted in this area.

Conclusions Considering the current situation in developed countries compared to developing countries, in the field of injury prevention and safety promotion, if one of the goals of the national health system to be health promotion in the society, the current status in terms of study design that are running, cannot results in safety promotion and injury prevention, therefore, as long as the frequency of intervention studies with the aim of injury prevention and safety promotion in the developing countries would not as much as developed countries, we could not expect any advances in the field of injury prevention and safety promotion in developing countries.