Injuries kill more Americans under the age of thirty than any other cause of death. As a Level 1 Trauma Center, St. Anthony Central Hospital sees some of the most critically injured patients in Colorado. Our trauma service provides care for more than 2,500 seriously injured people each year. The main causes of their injuries are motor vehicle crashes, motorcycle crashes, falls, bicycle, ski, and snowboard accidents and assaults.

All of these injured people could have benefited from injury prevention education prior to the event, and/or simple preventive equipment, such as helmets, seat belts or child safety seats.

St. Anthony Central’s Safety and Injury Prevention Program is a vital resource for our community, providing educational programs for adults and children on automobile safety, sports injury prevention, poison safety, child safety in the home and on the road, and a variety of other topics, depending on the interests and needs of the group. The program is active in local initiatives on fall prevention for aging adults.

The injury prevention coordinator works with neighborhood schools and children’s organizations to offer bicycle safety education to elementary age children, along with providing free sports helmets and fittings for low-income kids. In addition, the coordinator and a host of volunteers attend an average of 70 community events, each year, to do car seat checks, offer safety information, and fit children with free and low-cost bike helmets.

The program serves people of all ages and is an expression of our mission to nurture the health of the people in our communities. It also prevents many costly and life-threatening injuries each year.

Watch the video below, with Dr. Stewart Levy discussing brain injury prevention.