Thank you, Madam Chairperson.
Thank you for having me here today. My name is Jennifer Heatley and I'm the executive director of the Atlantic Collaborative on Injury Prevention, or ACIP as we call it for short. ACIP is an NGO based out of Halifax and works to reduce the burden of injury in the four Atlantic Canadian provinces.
After several years of working in the area of injury prevention, I continue to be surprised at its contradictory profile as a public health issue. On any given day, the media often leads with stories of injury in all its forms, but despite the high profile of individual incidents, there is a striking difference between injury and the other leading killers of Canadians.
Research dollars, surveillance systems, and strategies are pale compared to those of other major diseases such as cancer and heart disease. The public's concern about injury, although sincere, has not translated into "movembers" or "walks for the cure". Injuries are still considered bad luck or fate.
What we do know is that preventable injuries, both those that are intentional and unintentional, present a significant social and economic burden in Atlantic Canada and across the country. Over 1,000 Atlantic Canadians die annually as a result of injuries and another 16,000 are injured severely enough that they need to be hospitalized. Overall, this costs Atlantic Canada over $1 billion per year in direct and indirect costs.
Furthermore, injury is an issue that highly impacts our youth. Although injury is the leading cause of death across all ages, up to the age of 44 it is the number one cause of death. For children and teenagers, it is responsible for more deaths than all other causes combined.
Injuries that kill and disable so many Canadians are preventable through healthy public policy and evidence-based strategies. The issue of injury would benefit from a coordinated national injury prevention strategy. National strategies and coordinated efforts have been integral to other high-profile health issues. We need to move beyond attempting to change individual behaviours and work to create safer environments through broader social change.
There is a need for federal leadership to coordinate across sectors, so that injury prevention efforts are comprehensive and take into account the many factors that put individuals at risk for injury. Continuing to create divisions between issue areas or between intentional and unintentional injury is artificial and unnecessary, as the root causes are the same for all.
Although the federal government has recently indicated a planned focus on injury prevention for children, ACIP would encourage an approach that will address injury across ages, population groups, and injury issues. The socio-economic conditions that increase injury risk for children are the same as those that increase risk for other populations and age groups at higher risk, such as seniors and aboriginals. Furthermore, children are heavily influenced by the adults in their lives and their surrounding environments. Safe and healthy children cannot exist without safe and healthy adults, and communities.
Our communities won't be safe until they're equitable. Canada has the capacity to be as healthy and safe as other countries who are leaders in the health field, but we need to make some big changes. We know what the cure for this disease is. If we can come together as a country on a coordinated injury prevention strategy and a series of healthy public policies that address the role that poverty plays in injury, we can address billions of dollars in avoidable health care costs, and, more importantly, an enormous personal burden to millions of Canadians.
Thank you.
