Background

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) convened this meeting to initiate a dialogue on the challenges associated with behavioral science in unintentional injury prevention and to generate possible strategies to overcome them. 

Purpose:

The purpose of this working group was to document the contributions of behavioral science to injury prevention and assist the Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention at the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention in developing action plans to encourage more effective behavioral science research in unintentional injury prevention.

Goals:

1. To discuss and develop ways to more effectively promote the use of behavioral science in injury prevention.
2. To compile literature demonstrating effective behavioral interventions and approaches in injury prevention.
3. To develop priority research questions, methodologies and strategies for applying behavioral science to injury control, that can be used to set a research agenda.
4. To suggest how behavioral science contributions can be more effectively communicated in the fields of public health, psychology and injury control.

Participants

Researchers from various parts of the United States as well as Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom participated.  The meeting also included representatives from the CDC.  The fields of clinical, social and pediatric psychology, preventive medicine, health education, health promotion, epidemiology, and communication were all represented, and the group was appropriately diverse with respect to both gender and ethnicity.