Injury Prevention Toolkit

Injury Prevention is a field of public health in which efforts are taken to reduce the likelihood of bodily injury. Unintentional Injuries are commonly considered accidental results of an accident like a car wreck.  However, car wrecks and the injuries that result from car wrecks can be reduced by driving according to traffic safety laws and by wearing seat belts. So as our understanding of public safety increases, we realize that accidents and the injuries and deaths that result from them are not so accidental, but they are unintentional. 

Why should Indian communities care about Injury Prevention?  Injury prevention is important because unintentional injuries are currently the #1 cause of deaths for Indian people between the ages of 1 and 44 years old.  The good news is that these injuries and deaths are largely preventable! Injury prevention efforts are meant to protect our communities, our families and thus our future as Indian people. 

If you download the toolkit or sections of the toolkit, the feedback you provide would be greatly appreciated.  We have developed a short survey that can be completed online at your earliest convenience.

Tools on other topics can be added as your program grows.

This toolkit was created by the Tribal Epidemiology Center Consortium (TECC). TECC is made up of three Tribal Epidemiology Centers: the Northwest Tribal EpiCenter housed at the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board, the Southern Plains Inter-Tribal EpiCenter housed at the Oklahoma City Area Inter-Tribal Health Board, and the California Tribal EpiCenter housed at the California Rural Indian Health Board.   

The toolkit is meant to be a resource for communities to use when starting or continuing an injury prevention program.  We have provided all of the documents in both a microsoft word and PDF.  Our hope is that you can add your own logos, contact information and additional data into the tools as you see fit.  We know that there a lot of existing resources out there so we created an easy to use “Resource Guide” for each module.

A special thanks to the Injury Prevention Program of the Family and Community Health Department at the California Rural Indian Health Board (CRIHB). CRIHB staff members Barbara Hart and Karen Santana of the Injury Prevention Program contributed a great deal of time, energy, knowledge and resources into building this toolkit. Without their expertise in this field, we would not have been able to create this amazing resource.