Rady Children’s Hospital

A child under 15 is treated in a San Diego emergency department for unintentional injury every 15 minutes. Research indicates that most of these injuries could have been prevented through education and awareness. But according to Sue Cox, former Director of Trauma Services at Rady Children’s Hospital, many families simply are not aware of the injury risks to their children. For some families, they may be aware of the injury risk, yet have not yet adopted safety behaviors and products into their daily living. And many families, especially those in Southeastern San Diego, simply cannot afford the life saving devices that are available. That’s why Sue applied for a grant from the Kiwanis Cal-Nev-Ha Foundation.

Safety Store at Rady Children’s Hospital

You made it possible for the Foundation to provide a $12,500 grant to Rady Children’s Hospital for the development and implementation of a mobile Safety Store for injury prevention.

The initial concept for the Safety Store was to retrofit a decommissioned ambulance into a mobile safety store, allowing volunteers to travel to events to provide education and distribute resources to support injury prevention throughout the San Diego community.

Community partners were unable to raise the additional funding needed to support the use of the ambulance; however, funding from Kiwanis provided the seed money to launch the Safety Store, covering the expenditures for the initial purchase of products, staff coordination, design and production of bilingual injury risk assessments, safety education materials for parents, as well as promotional materials.

In recognition of the Foundation’s initial investment in the safety store, Kiwanis is listed as a Founding Sponsor on all injury prevention tip sheets printed today.

Now in its 8th year of operation and housed in the lobby of the Center for Healthier Communities, the Safety Store continues to sell safety products at cost to patients, families and visitors. The Safety Store also provides free 1:1 counseling by appointment to all families and provides referrals to other community resources that would be of assistance to families.

Safety Classes

The Safety Store also hosts two safety classes at no cost to attendees: “Safe Beginnings” for new and expectant parents of children up to 3 years of age; and “Safe Start” which provides education to preschool aged children ages 4-6.

Upon reviewing the injury prevention literature whereas children in military families are 4 times more likely to incur an unintentional injury in the home, staff at the Safety Store are now providing presentations to the military bases throughout the San Diego area through their monthly and quarterly “Baby Boot Camps” which are required for all families that live on base. With more than 50% of the work force in San Diego employed by the military, this is a huge population to serve.

Visiting Nurse Program

And the collaboration between Kiwanis and Rady Children’s Hospital continues to grow. In 2011, the Foundation provided a grant in the amount of $14,787 for the implementation of a Visiting Nurse Program. The program provided continuing education training for public health nurses employed by the County of San Diego Health and Human Services. The training was specific to nurses that provide home visitations to high risk new, and expectant parents, and the education provided was specific to injury prevention. The public health nurses received an overview of typical childhood development, related injury risk for each age group and strategies to teach parents to minimize injury risk to young children. A total of three seminars were provided to 75 nurses with more than 1,000 injury prevention starter kits distributed to families. If families required additional training or resources, they were referred to the Rady Safety Store.

Safe N Sound Safety Kiosk

In 2013, the Foundation provided a grant in the amount of $13,526 for the design and installation of the Safe N Sound safety kiosk. The kiosk provides a self-serve computer station for parents to access information on safety and injury prevention for children birth to 4 years of age. Parents then receive a print out with information and resources to take simple steps to modify the environment and supervision strategies to prevent unintentional injuries.

Adjacent to the Kiosk – which is placed in a high traffic area within the Warren Family Surgical Center waiting area – are injury prevention tip sheets which all carry the Kiwanis logo.