Injury prevention and control is a key public health priority. The study of injury epidemiology, prevention and control is vital to understanding causes of injury and strategies for prevention, to reduce the global burden of injuries and improve access to high quality care. This course is designed for those working in public health or related disciplines who have an interest in injury epidemiology, prevention and control, and would like to broaden their knowledge and skills. This course will develop student's capacities to apply appropriate concepts, frameworks and methods to quantify the epidemiological burden of injury (unintentional and intentional), identify risk factors including the social determinants of health and evidence-based strategies for prevention and management of injury across a range of contexts, cultures and injury types. The course will enable students to focus on an area of interest be it injury type or country context. It will provide students with appropriate theoretical frameworks and methodologies to identify evidence-based, effective strategies for both prevention and control of injury, including opportunities for advocacy. Students will develop methodological skills in conduct of real-world research on injury, including observational studies, evaluation of interventions geared towards prevention, and quantifying the economic impact of prevention. Issues relevant to injury including context, resources, community acceptance, cultural considerations, scalability and sustainability and their impact on injury prevention and control will be considered. Throughout, the course will seek to span these conceptual and methodological areas drawing upon examples and cases from domestic and global contexts, spanning high, middle and low resource settings across a range of injury types to ensure students have a diverse understanding of the issues and are equipped for both research and practitioner roles into the future.

The course draws on internationally recognised experts with a breadth of experience, and has an emphasis on practical learning experiences using real case scenarios. It is important that students enrolling in the course have knowledge and experience in public health or a health-related area. Interested students, who are not enrolled in a Masters program offered by the School of Population Health will need to contact the course convenor, who will assess whether they have the appropriate background, before enrolling in PHCM9792 Injury Epidemiology, Prevention and Control.

This course is an elective course of the Master of Public Health (MPH) and Master of Global Health (MGH) programs, comprising 6 units of credit towards the total required for completion of the study program.

External (Distance) with online teaching.

This course aims to develop student's capacities to apply appropriate concepts, frameworks and methods to quantify the epidemiological burden of injury (unintentional and intentional), identify risk factors including the social determinants of health and evidence-based strategies for prevention, management and treatment of injury across a range of contexts, cultures and injury mechanisms.

On completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Discuss injury prevention as a field of research and practice and its potential impact on population health and health systems
• Identify important contributors to the burden of injuries and long-term sequelae, including individual and environmental risk factors
• Explain the challenges in injury surveillance and critically appraise methodological approaches to quantifying the burden of injury and associated risk factors across different injury types and contexts
• Demonstrate understanding of the principles of injury prevention and apply public health frameworks to prevention strategies
• Propose and justify interventions to reduce the incidence of injury and evaluate the complex issues associated with implementing injury reduction strategies in community settings
• Discuss the role of advocacy as an approach to support implementation of injury prevention strategies, policy and legislation

Injury prevention is a broad and diverse field. Injury prevention practice may vary from teaching, development of advocacy campaigns, and policy analysis, to designing, implementing and evaluating interventions, and conducting research. As such, the teaching strategy used for the course is applied learning with practical lecture and case study content and assessment tasks. Core content is provided through lectures, including guest lectures who are leading experts in their respective field. Learning activities, which include the use of case studies and face-to-face and online student discussions, have been designed to engage students in the learning process, encourage active and self-directed learning and provide opportunities for students to reflect on key issues in injury prevention. This course will provide students with appropriate theoretical frameworks and methodologies to identify evidence-based, effective strategies for both prevention and control of injury, including opportunities for advocacy, that can be applied to a range of injury mechanisms. Issues relevant to injury including context, resources, community acceptance, cultural considerations, scalability and sustainability and their impact on injury prevention and control will be considered. Throughout, the course will seek to span these conceptual and methodological areas drawing upon examples and cases from Australian and global contexts, spanning high, middle and low resource settings across a range of injury mechanisms to ensure students have a diverse understanding of the issues and are equipped for both research and practitioner roles into the future.

Assessment Task 1: Individual Report - Injfury Prevention Brief
Length: 1500 words
Weighting: 30%

Assessment Task 2: The Reading Game participation and Online Quiz
Weighting: 20% (10% Reading Game participation and 10% Online Quiz)

Assessment Task 3: Individual Report – Impact Evaluation 
Length: 2500 words
Weighting: 50%

Learning resources for this course consist of the following:

• Course notes and readings (accessible electronically in Moodle)
• Lectures and case study slides (posted in Moodle)
• Lecture  and case study recordings (available in Moodle)
• Supplementary resources such as videos, websites and podcasts (available in Moodle)

There is no compulsory text for this course outside of the readings indicated in the course notes for each module.