Thank you very much. And thank you very much to the committee for the opportunity to speak here today.
Health promotion is such an important issue, and preventable injury is the leading cause of death for young Canadians under 44. Indeed, it's a leading cause of disability and death across a lifespan. We often consider injuries to be accidents or acts of fate, whereas research tells us that most injuries are in fact preventable. And Canada can and must do a better job at protecting our greatest resource, our children.
That's why ThinkFirst Canada exists, and Safe Kids and the other national organizations that address this issue. We were founded in 1992 to reduce serious preventable injury in Canada. We're a national charitable organization, with chapters in every province, and we're working to collaborate more in the territories. We work with our chapters and partners to increase health literacy and safety promotion through school, sport, and recreation-based programming, concussion education and awareness, and helmet promotion.
We develop our programs with multi-disciplinary committees, by drawing from different sources of expertise, and we deliver our messages with what we call VIPs, who are the voices of injury prevention--and they are injury survivors.
Keeping Canada's children safe should be everyone's concern. Trauma and head injuries, in particular, are at epidemic levels, and of course we've seen that in the media throughout the past couple of years. In Canada, injury is the leading cause of death and a major cause of hospitalization for children and youth. Injury kills an average of 290 Canadian children age 14 and under each year. It's estimated that 21,000 children are hospitalized for injury each year, or approximately one in every 300 children. Injury kills more children and youth than all other diseases combined.
The impact of injury on these children is often life-long. Head injuries alone account for substantial changes in learning ability, including delayed cognitive development in children and behavioural challenges. Children with spinal cord injuries may require wheelchairs full-time. This can inhibit their ability to play and severely limit future employment opportunities.