What do Barbara Barlow, Benjamin Franklin, Florence Nightingale, Lupien Leape, Father Flanagan and Samuel Plimsoll have in common? How did Harstad, Norway, dramatically decrease traffic injury rates over a decade? What is the Jaipur foot? This book sets out to tell stories absent from the social and political histories, namely, how it came to be that Western societies enjoy the benefits of safer workplaces, roads, homes and communities.

Chapters focus on car, home, work, play, nature, violence and medical treatment. Each highlights brief vignettes of successes in injury prevention (primarily in the USA) and profiles of heroes who worked, sometimes for decades, to achieve these victories. Another chapter focuses on models of injury prevention by examining various levels of communities—an industry, a town, a city and two countries—and their approaches to reducing morbidity and mortality. The final …