Price Michelle, Shebbo Fadia M, Mroueh Salman, Brown Rebeccah L, Al-Hajj Samar
Trauma Center, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.
Epidemiology and Population Health Department, American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon.
Inj Prev. 2024 Oct 15. doi: 10.1136/ip-2023-045224.
The Eastern Mediterranean Region suffers disproportionately from paediatric traffic-related injuries. Despite governmental laws, Lebanon-an eastern Mediterranean country-has low child restraint (CR) use prevalence. This study examined the impact of using car seat distribution, and child passenger safety education and awareness intervention to improve child passenger safety knowledge and practices among caregivers.
This study recruited Lebanese caregivers with one child or more, using a 4-wheel motor vehicle, and not using a car seat. The intervention comprised an educational session followed by a car seat or booster seat distribution and installation check by a certified child passenger safety technician. A baseline assessment questionnaire was used to identify reasons for prior CR non-use. A child passenger safety knowledge test was administered before, immediately after and 3 months postintervention to assess child passenger safety knowledge retention and compare it to the baseline using the conditional logit model for pre-post interventions.
Fifty-eight participants underwent the intervention. Affordability was identified as the primary reason for car seat non-use. Three months after the intervention, compliance with CRs use was reported at 100%, and correct responses on the knowledge test significantly increased (p<0.05) for all items except for harness tightness (p=0.673).
Our child passenger safety intervention resulted in improved knowledge and increased self-reported use of CRs in a caregivers' cohort in Lebanon. Further efforts should address sociocultural and economic barriers and the lack of local child passenger safety technicians to mitigate the region's paediatric road traffic injury and death toll.
东地中海区域在与交通相关的儿童伤害方面承受着不成比例的负担。尽管有政府法律，但黎巴嫩这个东地中海国家儿童约束装置（CR）的使用普及率较低。本研究探讨了通过发放汽车座椅以及开展儿童乘客安全教育和提高意识干预措施，来改善照顾者的儿童乘客安全知识和行为。
本研究招募了有一个或多个孩子、使用四轮机动车且未使用汽车座椅的黎巴嫩照顾者。干预措施包括一次教育课程，随后由一名认证的儿童乘客安全技术人员发放并安装汽车座椅或增高座椅。使用一份基线评估问卷来确定之前不使用儿童约束装置的原因。在干预前、干预后立即以及干预后3个月进行儿童乘客安全知识测试，以评估儿童乘客安全知识的留存情况，并使用干预前后的条件logit模型将其与基线进行比较。
58名参与者接受了干预。可负担性被确定为不使用汽车座椅的主要原因。干预3个月后，报告的儿童约束装置使用率为100%，除安全带松紧度外（p = 0.673），知识测试中所有项目的正确回答率均显著提高（p < 0.05）。
我们的儿童乘客安全干预措施提高了黎巴嫩一组照顾者的知识水平，并增加了他们自我报告的儿童约束装置使用率。应进一步努力解决社会文化和经济障碍以及当地儿童乘客安全技术人员短缺的问题，以减轻该地区儿童道路交通伤害和死亡人数。
