(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Last week, we noted several news stories covering the release of an American report (CDC) suggesting that schools adjust their start times for students, especially adolescents, so that they can get more sleep. The CDC noted several health and academic benefits. An article in Volume 81, 2015 of Accident Analysis & Prevention reports on a French study that shows a strong correlation between injuries and sleep problems."The study population included 1559 middle-school adolescents from north-eastern France who completed at the end of school year a self-administered questionnaire to gather school and out-of-school injuries during the school year, and to assess sleep difficulty and previous injury risk factors which were socioeconomic factors, school performance, obesity, alcohol/tobacco/cannabis/hard drugs use, health status, psychological health, and involvement-in-violence. For sleep difficulty and behaviour and health-related difficulties their first occurring over adolescent’s life course was gathered. Multinomial logistic regression models were used retaining only sleep difficulty and other risk factors which had started before the school year (thus before the injuries studied). School and out-of-school injuries and sleep difficulty were frequent. The adolescents with sleep difficulty without medical treatment had a higher risk of single school and out-of-school injuries and a much higher risk of repeated school and out-of-school injuries. The adolescents with persistent sleep difficulty despite a medical treatment also had a higher risk of single school and out-of-school injury, and a much higher risk of repeated school and out-of-school injuries." The authors conclude that "Injury prevention should focus on sleep difficulty, especially among adolescents with socioeconomic difficulties, via physician–parent–school–adolescent collaborations."  Read more>>

(From the Canadian Institute for Child Health) This report raises awareness of adolescent injury issues and supports evidence-based and necessary actions to prevent injuries in this population. Selected key findings:

• Contextual factors in a young person’s home, school, neighbourhood and peer contexts are important to consider when examining injury risk.
• There are specific vulnerable groups for injury, including young people who reside in group homes or foster care, students who are bullied and students living in rural settings.
• Students attending schools in low SES neighbourhoods had a greater number of severe injuries. However, severe injuries were also frequent among grade 9/10 boys in neighbourhoods with high average household income.
• Negative social characteristics of neighbourhoods, including a lack of trust, fear of being taken advantage of by neighbours, feeling there are no good places to spend free time and neighbourhoods that are not safe to play in, were associated with a greater likelihood of severe injury.
• Peers have a significant influence on a young person’s injury risk. Young people who do not engage in health risk behaviours such as alcohol use or smoking were still at increased risk for injury if their peers engaged in these activities.

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(An item from ISHN Member information service) Three articles in Issue 5-6, 2012 of Journal of Safety Research describe the influence that peers and friends can have on teen driving safety. The first article notes that teen aggressive driving increases with the number of teen passengers in the car, presenting a classic argument for graduated licensing. The second article suggests that a friend can have a moderating and positive affect, especially a romantic partner, a friend who disapproves of anti-social behaviour and friends who model safe driving. The third article notes that risk-taking peers, substance use and tolerance of deviance can increase the likelihood of speeding. Read more.