Public health approach to injury prevention

The public health model is the most common approach adopted to guide injury prevention efforts worldwide.1 In fact, the principles of the model have been promoted by the WHO as an approach to understand the causes of violence and as a model to address violence in the community.2 The public health model provides a step-by-step approach to prevention: injury data are examined to establish the extent of the injury problem, both injury risk and protective factors are identified along with effective injury prevention strategies, and successful prevention measures are implemented and evaluated. The model’s focus is on demonstrating the need for, and evidence of the impact of, injury prevention efforts. However, high-quality evidence alone is not enough to incite the development or modification of injury prevention policy.3

The public health model has previously been criticised for assuming that evidence-based interventions will be adopted in practice and for not considering how research findings are disseminated and move into practice in the ‘real-word’,4 5 such as through adoption of prevention support functions like building capacity of workers in implementing interventions.4 In addition, there is no scope to take into account advocacy efforts or contextual features, such as resource availability or political will, that may have an impact on the implementation of injury prevention strategies.