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Children's Hospital Boston understands the importance of keeping children safe not only while they are patients in the hospital, but also once they leave. One of the most common types of unintentional injury among children occurs when they are passengers in vehicles-either they are not restrained in a seat belt or car seat, or their seat is not properly installed.
Lois Lee, MD, MPH, director of Children's Injury Prevention Program (IPP) dedicates much of her time at Children's to researching the causes and types of pediatric injuries and using the results to evaluate what can be done to prevent them. Lee, an advocate for child passenger safety laws, sees legislative advocacy as one way to promote prevention and safety. Last year, she supported Children's efforts to promote the booster seat bill in Massachusetts, which was signed into law last August. She also recently testified at the State House in support of the primary seat belt bill. "The only way lives can be saved is through prevention efforts like the seat belt law," she says. "Parents who wear seat belts are more likely to properly restrain their children in a car as well."
Lee and the IPP team also provide car and booster seats, along with training on how to properly use them, to low-income families receiving care in the Children's Hospital Primary Care Center and at the Martha Eliot Health Center. "By educating families about proper car seat usage and actually providing them with the right car and booster seats, we can hopefully help children have a much lower chance of getting hurt," says Lee.
The IPP team has also developed a pilot inpatient program that provides car seats, including ones designed for children with special health care needs, to in-need parents of children discharged from the hospital's inpatient units. IPP hopes to eventually expand the car seat program to the hospital's outpatient units and its satellite location in Waltham.
"Our ultimate goal is to ensure that every child is restrained properly," says Lee. "It's just one more way we can help keep children safe.
For more information, visit childrenshospital.org/communitybenefits. |
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