How your generosity provided nearly $150,000 in grants to our partner hospitals!
In 2005, Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego was gifted a van to support their injury prevention efforts. In collaboration with Safe Kids San Diego, the hospital uses the van to travel across San Diego County, hosting injury prevention activities and events for children and their families.
The van has been a solid workhorse for nearly 20 years; however, the cost of maintenance, as well as the lack of active safety features that are now required in vehicles (a backup camera for example), has brought the need for a new van to the top of their priority list. The hospital will use a grant of more than $45,000 from the CNH Children’s Fund to purchase a new van, ensuring more families have the education and tools needed to prevent unintentional injuries in the home, at school, and in the community. As an added bonus, this new van will allow the hospital to extend its reach to two additional counties, making education more accessible to low- to moderate-income families, those that are at the highest risk of unintentional injuries.
It may surprise you to learn that research has found that 9 out of 10 drowning deaths for children younger than 14 happened while the child was being supervised. From 2014 through 2018, drowning was the leading cause of death for children under 14 in Hawai‘i. Another area of concern in Hawai‘i is the increase of firearms registrations. Between 2020 and 2011 the number of registered firearms climbed 319.3%. A U.S. General Accounting Office study estimated 31% of accidental deaths caused by firearms might be prevented with the addition of a child-proof safety lock. That’s why our friends at Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women and Children will use a $20,000 grant from the CNH Children’s Fund, to purchase “Water Watcher” cards and life jackets, as well as gun locks, to promote water and firearm safety initiatives in schools.
The issue of imposter car seats being sold through online “marketplace” vendors such as Amazon is a serious concern that puts the safety of children at risk. With some systems costing upwards of $800, families are purchasing these 3rd party seats without the assurance of safety or authenticity. Additionally, expired car seats or ones that have been in car crashes are being used or sold, leaving families with unsafe car seats or no car seats at all. This poses a significant risk for families with infants and children. Our partners at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital will use their $24,700 grant from the CNH Children’s Fund to purchase child safety seats, including medical safety seats, and provide Child Passenger Safety training and recertification to local injury prevention volunteers.
In recent years, the popularity of Off-Highway Vehicles (OHVs) has increased as families have discovered them to be an excellent way to explore the outdoors. Unfortunately, this trend has led to a rise in OHVs-related pediatric injuries. Renown Children’s Hospital has seen an increase in such injuries. In 2021, pediatric OHVs-related injuries were the third leading cause of injury in the northern Nevada region. Additionally, injury severity was nearly double in children who were not wearing helmets compared to those who had helmets on. Forty-seven percent of these injuries occurred outside a 50-mile radius from Renown Health, which is the region’s only trauma center, covering 100,000 square miles. With a $15,000 grant from the CNH Children’s Fund, the hospital will establish an OHV injury prevention initiative aimed at reducing the number of pediatric OHVs-related injuries in the community. In collaboration with the Nevada Outdoor School and the Nevada Offroad Association, the initiative will focus on raising awareness of the risks associated with children riding on OHVs; educating parents and children on safe riding practices; and responsibly distributing safety gear for children.
Each year, the Trauma Administrative Team at Valley Children’s Hospital reviews trauma center data to determine the most common causes of injury for children under 14 in order to guide them in their injury prevention efforts. The latest data indicate motor vehicle collisions remain a common mechanism of injury, as do pedestrian and bicycle crashes. With a grant of $23,197 from the CNH Children’s Fund, the hospital will purchase child safety seats and reflector/flashlights to distribute to children and families in need. The reflector/flashlights will be distributed at pedestrian and bicycle safety outreach events as a way for drivers to better identify pediatric pedestrians and bicyclists while the child safety seats will be distributed within the hospital and in the community. For each safety device distributed, the child and/or the adult will receive appropriate safety information on its use and additional prevention tips.
For the first time in 60 years, firearm-related injuries have surpassed motor vehicle crashes among children and adolescents. Firearm-related injuries are the new leading cause of death for children under 12 years of age. Currently, there are limited interventions in place to educate families about gun safety. Our partners at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland believe that questions surrounding gun safety and gun locks are not being asked often enough. As a Pediatric Level 1 Trauma Center, the hospital is tasked by the American College of Surgeons to plan and implement violence intervention and screening programs. To meet this need, the hospital will utilize a portion of their $20,000 grant from the CNH Children’s Fund to develop a screener in the Emergency Department, purchase gun locks, as well as Stop The Bleed kits. Stop The Bleed (STB) is a new curriculum that teaches the lay community how to respond to life-threatening bleeding. Through the STB program, the hospital will conduct community training and provide STB kits to families and local partners as an intervention, with the goal of distributing approximately 100 kits over the next year.