Child Health Injury Prevention Initiative

The Child Health Injury Prevention Initiation (CHIPI) is a joint effort to prevent childhood injuries by the UC Irvine School of Medicine's departments of Pediatrics and Emergency Medicine and the Department of Surgery's Division of Trauma & Critical Care Surgery.

The initiative's goal is that no child suffers an injury due to preventable causes.

The problem

• Injury is the leading cause of death and disability for children nationally, as well as in California and Orange County.
• Most injuries are preventable.

Knowledge gap

There is a lack of screening for risk factors, such as:

• Age, gender and family history
• Socioeconomic and cultural identification
• Medical conditions (asthma, obesity, neurodevelopmental and other neurologic conditions)
• Environment (living, school, play)
• Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), including exposure to violence, trauma or natural disaster

Solutions

CHIPI members are working to develop a framework for action, which will include gathering data and conducting research aimed at raising awareness and enacting policy changes to protect the safety of our children.