• injury prevention and control
• young people
• public health approach
• UK

“Which disease tops the list of mortality causes among children, adolescents and young adults in all the developed countries and in an increasing number of developing countries? A disease responsible for considerable morbidity and much long-term or permanent disability, which in addition to causing a great deal of human suffering costs the community vast sums of money, and yet is scarcely taught in medical and health professional schools, is little researched and the subject of only a limited number of preventive programmes, which if they do exist are often inappropriate and inadequate. There is only one answer: accident injuries”. ¹

This document is intended to provoke a national commitment to injury prevention and control as the single highest health priority for our young people in the UK in 1998.

For our citizens between the ages of 1 and 19 years, injury represents the greatest risk for sudden death, the commonest reason for hospital attendance, and a potent source of short and long term morbidity. Injuries are strongly concentrated among those already most socially deprived. The pain and suffering to the young people and their families concealed by these bald facts are barely imaginable, while the economic consequences from their loss, incapacity, and treatment are immense.²

We are not alone in this—many developed countries have even worse records—by the year 2020, the World Health Organisation predicts that injury will become the greatest single reason for loss of healthy human life years on earth.³ In 1996, the 3rd International Conference on Injury Prevention and Control attracted 1200 delegates and endorsed the Melbourne Declaration⁴—a call to all nations to recognise this emerging global threat.

In the UK, we have targeted accident mortality in our national health and road transport strategies from 1991/2^5–12 …