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Motor Vehicle > Child Safety Seat Use
More Evidence Needed to Determine
Effectiveness of Education Programs
Alone to Increase Child Safety
Seat Use
When correctly installed and used, child safety seats reduce the risk of death by 70% for infants and 47%-54% for toddlers, and they reduce the need for hospitalization by 69% for children aged 4 years and younger.
A systematic review of published studies in the healthcare literature, conducted on behalf of the Task Force on Community Preventive Services by a team of experts, found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of education-only programs to increase knowledge about, or use of, child safety seats. This does not mean that these interventions are ineffective, but that additional research is needed to determine their effects. Education is a central component of most other effective interventions. Until more and better information becomes available, communities might choose to make decisions about the use of education-only programs on grounds other than evidence of direct effects from available studies.
Background
- Education-only programs provide information about the use of child safety seats and relevant skills to parents, children, or professional groups. Giving information to people provides the basic foundation for moving them toward behavior change such as performing new skills (e.g., routinely restraining children in safety seats) and enacting new policies (e.g., implementing hospital policies to discharge infants only if the parent uses a child safety seat). Provision of information is a central and necessary component of interventions such as community campaigns, distribution programs, and incentive programs.
- The Task Force recommends that clinicians counsel parents and children about the use of motor vehicle child safety seats. To complement this recommendation without overlap, we defined education-only programs for this review as any program designed to provide information about child safety seats other than those involving one-on-one counseling of a patient by a primary care clinician.
Findings from the Systematic Review- Available studies provide insufficient evidence to assess the effectiveness of education-only programs in improving knowledge about, or use of, child safety seats.
- Education-only programs were directed to different audiences including parents, children, and professional groups. Professional education interventions resulted in increased institutional training, policy, and enforcement.
- Educational programs for professional groups might increase their knowledge about the importance of advocating for safety seat use among children. Their advocacy might, in turn, be a predisposing factor for other interventions. No harms of educational programs for professional groups were proposed in the literature.
Publications:
The findings and conclusions in this report have not been formally disseminated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and should not be construed to represent any agency determination or policy.
The Guide to Community Preventive Services (Community Guide) provides recommendations on population-based interventions to promote health and to prevent disease, injury, disability, and premature death, appropriate for use by communities and healthcare systems. For more information about the Community Guide (including links to publications and a variety of resources) see www.thecommunityguide.org and for more information about motor vehicle occupant injuries see www.thecommunityguide.org/mvoi/.
This information is in the public domain. Copying and disseminating freely is encouraged. However, citation to source is appreciated.
Updated – January 23, 2008
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