Physicians develop their clinical and counseling skills while in medical school and residency, which is why encouraging physicians-in-training to become policy advocates helps to ensure that laws and policies designed to prevent injuries are effective and in line with the current state of medical knowledge.

The Injury Prevention Center at Rhode Island Hospital and its Hasbro Children’s Hospital has been active in reducing and preventing injury for 20 years in our community.

Each year, Rhode Island experiences:

• Hundreds of injury-related deaths
• Thousands of injury-related hospitalizations
• Countless injuries leading to disability
• Many of these injuries can be avoided by studying and developing programs aimed at preventing injuries from occurring. For this reason, emergency department physicians at Rhode Island Hospital created the Injury Prevention Center in 1998.

Injury-related morbidity and mortality remain important public health epidemics. In 2018, there were over 240,000 injury related deaths nationwide with unintentional injury remaining the leading cause of death for individuals 1 to 44 years old. More research is urgently needed to control the burden of injury.

The Rhode Island Hospital Injury Control COBRE supports the development of independent researchers to lead rigorous, innovative injury control research that changes practice and improves health.