Background: Injuries include potentially life-threatening problems associated with increased hospital admission and permanent disability among children, with considerable financial, emotional and social effects on the child and the family as well as on the community and society as a whole. The preventability of injuries through adopting a variety of interventions necessitates stakeholders (e.g. parents, health professionals and policymakers) supporting and implementing such interventions. There is paucity of evidence in Iran regarding the needs for controlling home injuries among children. Objectives: To explore the practice of parents, health professionals and policy makers associated with the prevention of home injuries among urban children under 5 years; and to identify barriers to and facilitators of success for such practices in Iran. Methods: A generic qualitative approach was adopted with home observation and semi-structured interviews undertaken with: 18 parents attending urban health centres in Tehran for childhood immunization; 28 health professionals whose scope of duty was child health and safety and working in the urban health centres; and 19 policymakers working as top-level managers in different organisations concerned with child health and safety. The recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and the data were analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Children are living in hazardous environments which increase their risk for home injuries. All parents adopted a range of insufficient child proofing measures at the study time. They need to be supported, particularly financially and educationally, to enhance the safety level of their homes. Health professionals can potentially be supportive to meet their needs, but practice is hampered by the lack of a comprehensive national strategy. Policymakers who are responsible for tackling this problem have confronted barriers at the individual (e.g. lack of awareness) and societal (e.g. lack of rules and enforcement) levels. Conclusion: Child home injury is a complex and multifaceted subject whose prevention is affected by a wide range of facilitators and barriers to be considered in developing new strategies and revising the current initiatives. This study has implications for advocating policies that improve safety culture throughout society as well as mobilizing communities to solve the issue.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:722500 |
Date | January 2017 |
Creators | Barat, Atena |
Publisher | University of Nottingham |
Source Sets | Ethos UK |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Source | http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/43306/ |
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