Injuries: Causes, Control Strategies, and Public Policy

Although no health problem is of greater "impact," injuries generally receive little public attention. Physicians traditionally limit their concerns to the proper treatment of the injured, and those in biomedical research rarely carry out thorough studies of injuries and their prevention. This short book gives emphasis to the injury problem, reviews some of the epidemiologic factors involved, and focuses on control. It is a worthwhile contribution. A useful, modern concept concerning injuries is that they involve different types of energy, specifically, kinetic, chemical, electrical, thermal, and radiation energy. Professor Robertson, now a Yale faculty member, describes how each type can injure humans. A separate chapter provides brief but up-to-date information on the incidence and economic costs of injuries. One section of the book focuses on an approach to prevention that considers host, agent, and environmental factors, which in turn can be affected by preinjury, injury, and postinjury modifiers. While that