During the past century we have witnessed a remarkable reduction of injuries. Nevertheless, in recent years injuries have been the number one leading killer cause of death in children and young adults in the United States and the fifth leading cause of death for all ages. Injury Prevention: Competencies for Unintentional Injury Prevention Professionals helps injury prevention professionals make further improvements in preventing and controlling unintentional injuries.

The National Training Initiative for Injury and Violence Prevention's (NTI) Core Competencies and their objectives form the chapters and outline for this book. The core competencies and objectives outline a common understanding of the essential skills and knowledge that are regarded as necessary to work in injury prevention. While the Core Competencies focus upon both violence (intentional) and unintentional injuries, this book concentrates only upon unintentional injuries. The first eight chapters adhere to the first eight Core Competencies and their objectives. The chapter headings match directly to those of the competency objectives. For Core Competency 9, the later chapters provide information on the major unintentional injury problems (e.g., motor-vehicle injuries, poisoning, fall injuries, drowning, residential fires, and firearm injuries).