Volume 3, Issue 5, October 2009

New Research Shows Parents Can Cut Teen Crash Risk

Two new studies released in the October 2009 issue of Pediatrics conducted by The Young Driver’s Research Initiative (YDRI) at CIRP with funding from State Farm Insurance Companies® reveal a link between teen driver crashes and the way families communicate and approach rules about safety. Researchers found teens are half as likely to crash and far less likely to drink and drive, use a cell phone, or speed if their parents set clear rules, pay attention to where they’re going, who they’ll be with, and when they’ll be home in a supportive way. In addition, the researchers found teens that reported being the main driver of a car were twice as likely to have been in a crash than teens who said they share a car with other family members.

These findings are also part of Driving Through the Eyes of Teens, A Closer Look, a comprehensive report of recently published research providing evidence-based recommendations for teen driver safety practitioners and parents that may reduce teen crash risk. A guide has been created to help stakeholders most effectively use the report and associated new resources to improve the safety of teen drivers.

The study findings and report resonated with the media. “The Today Show,” USA Today, the Associated Press, and U.S. News and World Report featured the findings, as well as tips to help teens and their families navigate the first year of independent driving.

Learn How to Use YDRI Data to Engage Parents Where You Live:
Register Now for Webinar

Celebrate National Teen Driver Safety Week with a Webinar that will help you use the information from Driving Through the Eyes of Teens, A Closer Look to engage parents on this important issue. Report authors Ken Ginsburg, MD, MSEd, and Flaura Winston, MD, PhD, will walk Webinar participants through the comprehensive report, providing evidence-based recommendations for teen driver safety practitioners and parents that may reduce crash risk. They will describe the implications of their findings and suggested “calls to action” for teen driver safety practitioners, as well as introduce related resources created to help parents enhance their skills to help teens safely navigate the first years of driving. This free Webinar is hosted by Driver Education and Training Administrators (DETA), State Farm Insurance Companies®, and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

The Webinar will be held on October 19 from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. (EST) and will include a period for questions and answers. Register now.

New Resources Available To Help Families Navigate Teen Driving

To support the research report recommendations, the Center created practical resources for parents to enhance their skills to help teens safely navigate the first years of driving.

A new website features video and text from experts about how to communicate safety concerns to teenagers in a way that will make them more likely to accept potentially life saving rules and boundaries. The website provides answers to four important questions parents should consider: 1) Will their safety concerns be heard when their teen makes a decision? 2) Will their teen tell them what’s really going on? 3) Will their teen follow their rules and boundaries? 4) Are they prepared to handle the expected bumps in the road?

In addition, the Center created a set of downloadable fact sheets enhance parents' skills to help teens safely navigate the first years of driving: Developing Driving Experience; Driving Lesson Timeline: A Coaching Guide for Parents; Driving Practice Log; Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL); Parenting Tips to Keep Teen Drivers Safe; Set House Rules and Reduce Crash Risks for Your Teen ; and Teach Your Teen to Be a Smart Passenger.

Learn about new resources on teen driver safety in future issues of this newsletter. Visit www.chop.edu/youngdrivers for the resources available now.

Center Findings Highlight Importance of Child Restraint Lateral Testing

Findings from research funded by The Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies (CChIPS) and Wichita State University were recently presented at the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine’s Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD.  The study evaluated the performance of both rear facing and forward facing child safety seats in far-side impacts through a series of sled tests conducted at varying test speeds with both LATCH and seat belt attachment.

Although all of the child safety seats experienced significant lateral movement during the tests, one of the
rear-facing seats disengaged from its base during testing. The CChIPS research, as well as similar testing by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), spurred the child seat manufacturer to recall the seat and supply parents with an improved design. 

According to Yoganand Ghati, MS, primary author of the research paper, further studies are needed to better evaluate the lateral performance of child safety seats. “Child safety seats are incredibly effective at preventing injuries to child occupants,” he says. “Implementing performance testing of child safety seats in the lateral direction like that conducted as part of our study will further improve the protection provided by these restraints in all crash conditions.”

Read the study abstract to learn more.

CIRP Speaks to Youth at the Distracted Driving Summit

They may not realize it, but today’s teens are already “leaders” in setting norms on occupant safety, according to Dennis Durbin, MD, MSCE, co-director of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at CHOP. At the Distracted Driving Summit in Washington, DC, Dr. Durbin commended teens as the first generation of children to use belt-positioning booster seats, which are now widely accepted by younger families.

“Ten years ago, none of us involved in this work could have imagined that booster seat use would so quickly become normal. That is why I think you may hold the key to changing what’s considered 'normal' behind the wheel 10 years from now.  It’s always easier to develop a new habit than to break an old one,” Dr. Durbin said.  “So, I’m challenging you to use your energy and innovation to start a conversation with your parents and change the conversation with your friends.”

Spearheaded by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation, the summit gathered transportation safety experts to address the dangers of text-messaging and other distractions behind the wheel, a leading cause of teen driving-related crashes.

Researching Dating Violence

The Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center (PCVPC) at CIRP recently received its first grant related to dating violence. Awarded by The University of Pennsylvania Center for Public Health Initiatives, the grant will be used to develop a brief, evidence-based screening tool for adolescent dating violence (Adolescent RADAR). The tool will be based on input from adolescent health specialists, experts on adolescent dating violence, adolescents (another concurrent study), and the validated RADAR tool established by the Massachusetts Medical Society to assess for adult domestic violence.

CChIPS Celebrates Fifth Anniversary 

The Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies (CChIPS) has entered its fifth year of conducting research as one of only 40 National Science Foundation University Cooperative Research Centers (I/UCRC) in the country and the only NSF Center devoted to injury prevention research. The CChIPS current research portfolio includes nine studies, all involving how children are injured in motor vehicle crashes and ways that these injuries can be prevented.

On hand to mark this milestone at the fall semi-annual CChIPS meeting were its Industry Advisory Board (IAB) members. These members contribute research dollars to support the CChIPS mission and include:  Britax Child Safety Inc.; Dorel Juvenile Group; the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA); Nissan Technical Center North America Inc.; State Farm Insurance Companies®; TK Holdings Inc.; Toyota Motor North America Inc.; Volkswagen of America Inc., and Honda R & D Americas Inc. In addition to hearing early findings from the current research studies, the IAB members considered next year’s research portfolio and participated in a panel discussion from manufacturers moderated by NHTSA on current proposed methods for testing child restraints in side impacts. Learn more about CChIPS.

Center Receives Grant for Traumatic Stress Research

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) recently awarded a two-year, $275,000 grant to the Injury Center to predict posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) risk in children after acute traumatic events. The grant will be used to build a network and data registry to create predictive tools. Nancy Kassam-Adams, PhD, principal investigator and the Center’s associate director for behavioral research, will be working with colleagues from Kent State University, Summa Health System, and The University of Queensland on this research project.  In prospective studies of children’s and parents’ reactions to traffic crashes and other medical emergencies, Center researchers found that most families experience at least a few acute stress disorder (ASD) symptoms within the first month after injury. Six months later, 1 in 6 still has clinically significant symptoms. To learn more, visit AfterTheInjury.org, the Center’s award-winning website devoted to helping children and their families recover after an injury.




Recent Presentations from the Injury Center

  • Arbogast KB. Evidence for Best Practice Recommendations and Current Trends. 8th Annual Child Passenger Safety Technical Conference. Lancaster, PA. September 11, 2009.
  • Arbogast KB. Abdominal Injuries in Belt-Positioning Booster Seats.  Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM) 53rd Annual Conference. Baltimore, MD. October 7, 2009.
  • Arbogast KB. Analysis of Child Restraints in Side Impacts. CIREN Public Meeting. Baltimore, MD. October 8, 2009.
  • Maltese MR. Pediatric Anatomic Development and Biomechanics – Part 1: Head and Cervical Spine. Child Occupant Protection: Current Knowledge and Future Opportunities Seminar. SAFER -- the Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre at Chalmers University. Goteborg, Sweden. September 15, 2009.
  • Nance M. Child Specific Injuries and Injury Mechanisms: A View From the Surgery Suite. Child Occupant Protection: Current Knowledge and Future Opportunities Seminar. SAFER -- the Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre at Chalmers University. Goteborg, Sweden. September 15, 2009.
  • Winston FK. Global Trends in Child Occupant Protection from Real World Crash Data. Child Occupant Protection: Current Knowledge and Future Opportunities Seminar. SAFER -- the Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre at Chalmers University. Goteborg, Sweden. September 15, 2009.

Recent Publications from the Injury Center

Focus On:
Ken Ginsburg, MD, MSEd

Focus On: Ken Ginsburg, MD, MSEd

Ken Ginsburg, MD, MSEd knows parents matter to teens, and he has devoted his career to fostering this important bond through research and clinical care. As an investigator for the Young Driver Research Initiative (YDRI) at CHOP, Dr. Ginsburg is working to reduce the amount of motor vehicle crashes, the number one cause of death for adolescents.

The YDRI team has used The Teen-Centered method, a research methodology he developed, to explore how teens perceive safety and risk. By eliciting adolescent input on driving safety and asking them to generate, prioritize, and explain their solutions to this public health problem, Dr. Ginsburg and his colleagues are designing evidence-based programs and public health materials to help parents, doctors, and others prevent teen driver crashes.

Two new studies he co-authored published in the October 2009 issue of Pediatrics reveal the importance of active parenting in keeping teen drivers safe. “We discovered an association between teen driver crashes and the way families communicate and approach rules about safety. We found teens who say their parents set clear rules, pay attention to where they’re going, who they’ll be with, and when they’ll be home in a supportive way are half as likely to crash and far less likely to drink and drive, use a cell phone while driving, or speed,” says Dr. Ginsburg. “We also found that teens who say they have control of the car keys are twice as likely to crash as teens who say they share a car with other family members. Rules and monitoring matter. Parents are crucial to teen driving safety.”

An Associate Professor of Pediatrics at The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Adolescent Medicine Specialist at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), Dr. Ginsburg also serves as the Medical Director for Covenant House, Pennsylvania, a shelter-based care system for homeless, street, and marginalized youth in Philadelphia. The author of several books, including A Parent’s Guide to Building Resilience in Children and Teens (The American Academy of Pediatrics: 2006), he also is the 2009 National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign Spokesperson for “Drugged and Drunken Driving, for Parents the Anti-Drug,” from the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Dr. Ginsburg lectures widely to parents and professionals on building resilience, and his resilience/stress reduction model is used on military bases across the country to help children and adolescents cope with their parents’ deployment.

“Stress is the underlying force that drives most behaviors that risk good health. By developing strategies to support parents’ critical role in protecting their teenagers, I hope to help families establish a loving, safe environment for teens to grow. Parents are teens’ most important teachers,” says Dr. Ginsburg. “It’s not enough to set rules and monitor. Parents must also be supportive and honor their teens’ need for growing independence. When they let their adolescents know rules are in place to protect their safety, not to control them, teens are more receptive to parental wisdom and experience. Effective parents also make it easier for teens to follow the rules by helping them develop strategies to make wise decisions even amidst the pushes and pulls of peer culture.”

CIRP Organizes Seminar on Child Passenger Safety in Sweden

Kristy Arbogast, PhD, director of engineering for the Center for Injury Research and Prevention (CIRP) at CHOP, organized and moderated "Child Occupant Protection: Current Knowledge and Future Opportunities,” a seminar hosted by SAFER -- the Vehicle and Traffic Safety Centre at Chalmers University in Goteborg, Sweden on  September 15, 2009. Topics discussed during this informative day included pediatric anatomic development and biomechanics, child anthropometry, and global trends in child occupant protection. Over 75 members of industry, government, and academia attended the seminar, which featured presentations from other CIRP members, Volvo, The University of Virginia, Chalmers University, and The University of Michigan.

In the News

Joel Fein, MD, MPH, director and principal investigator of the Philadelphia Collaborative Violence Prevention Center (PCVPC), recently shared his views with The Philadelphia Daily News on how PCVPC is working to reduce teen violence in the city.
Read the article.

Center Engineer Elected to AAAM Board

Kristy Arbogast, PhD, the Center’s director of engineering, was recently elected to the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM) Board of Directors. AAAM is a professional multidisciplinary organization dedicated entirely to motor vehicle crash injury prevention and control. It was founded in 1957 by the Medical Advisory Committee to the Sports Car Club of America.

Support Our Center

The dedicated doctors, researchers, and outreach professionals at the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at CHOP are fighting to save the lives of children of all ages. But we need your help. To make a secure, on-line donation, please visit The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia Foundation Donation Page and select “Center for Injury Research and Prevention” in the drop-down menu. You also may telephone the CHOP Foundation at 267-426-6500. For more information on our research and programs, please visit www.chop.edu/injury.

The Center for Injury Research and Prevention Family of Websites