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INJURY AND VIOLENCE PREVENTION (IVP) BRANCH

ā€‹Core Statewide Injury Prevention

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funds the Core State Injury Prevention Program (Core SIPP), housed in the California Department of Public Healthā€™s (CDPH) Injury and Violence Prevention Branch. This funding aims to support health department infrastructure, data, and partnerships to identify and respond to existing and emerging injury threats with data-driven public health actions. Core SIPP focuses on three topic areas: Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and Transportation Safety. The program is intended to increase protective factors and reduce risk factors using the best available evidence to prevent injuries and death.

Core SIPP works toward its goals by:

  • utilizing robust data and surveillance,
  • strengthening strategic collaborations and partnerships, and
  • conducting assessment and evaluation.

CDPH received CDC Core SIPP funding in 2021 to implement a variety of activities under the three topic areas including: Data analysis, creating data briefs, providing resource guides, and education resources.

 Adverse Childhood Experiences

ACEs are traumatic events that can occur before age 18 and have a lasting impact on health and well-being. ACEs measures include:

  • prolonged trauma in the form of emotional, physical, or sexual child abuse;
  • household distresses, including:
    • intimate partner violence

    • ā€‹living with household members who abuse substances, are suicidal, suffer mental illness, or living with parents who are divorced or separated.

Those who experience ACEs are at an increased risk for chronic illnesses such as heart conditions, obesity, kidney disease, and diabetes in adulthood. Promoting ACEs related prevention and intervention efforts can potentially reduce the associated health risks.

CDPH actively addresses ACEs as a public health concern. CDPHā€™s Essentials for Childhood (EfC) program promotes safe, stable, and nurturing environments for children aims to prevent ACEs and mitigate their impacts on health and wellbeing. The EfC program works to support families through social norms change, programs, and evidence-based policies. Core SIPP funding enables the Department to amplify its existing work within the EfC program. To learn more about this work, visit the resources below:

ā€‹Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) disrupt the normal function of the brain and can adversely affect cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and physical functioning, leading to reductions in quality of life. A TBI can be caused by a bump, blow, or penetration to the head.

Falls are one of the leading causes of TBI. Older adults aged 65+ are at greater risk for falls and unintentional TBI due to the bodyā€™s aging process, and rates of TBI deaths and hospitalizations are greatest among older adults.

CDPHā€™s Healthy Aging Initiative works to support TBI activities under the Core SIPP grant by providing:

  • data analysis,
  • data briefs highlighting the burden of TBI in older adults, and
  • education and technical assistance around TBI and older adults to partners and key stakeholders.
  • For more information on TBI in older adults, visit the Healthy Aging Initiative Resource page:

ā€‹Transportation Safety

We focus our strategic efforts on preventing transportation-related injury in this topic area. In 2022, motor vehicle related incidents resulted in 4,836 deaths and over 300,000 emergency visits and hospitalizations in California. According to the CDCā€‹ā€‹, motor-vehicle traffic (MVT) crashes are the leading cause of unintentional injury death and the second leading cause of non-fatal unintentional injury among adolescents and young adults ages 15ā€“24. Driver inexperience is a significant cause of the high rate of motor vehicle crashes involving young people. In order to realize increased motor vehicle and pedestrian safety, we have adopted the U.S. Transportation Departmentā€™s Safe Systems Approach (SSA) to eliminating traffic fatalities and serious injuries in California. A Safe Systems Approach is based on the premise that systems should operate proactively, take into account human vulnerabilities, and human mistakes, and incorporate redundancies to keep everyone safe. By building in these additional ā€œlayersā€ of safety, fatalities and the most severe injuries can be avoided. In particular, we are interested in young drivers and active transportation.ā€‹

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