Accidents in children: the potential contribution of the pediatrician to the field research approach.

Preventing injuries means using epidemiological knowledge of accidents. In order to increase this knowledge on accidents in childhood, field research is badly needed, in addition to other approaches. First, a comparison of the main characteristics of three of these approaches is presented. Second, the authors try to demonstrate why, in their opinion, the contribution of the practising pediatrician in this kind of applied research is to be considered as: (a) interesting for him; (b) fruitful in terms of data gathering and analysis, and (c) useful for all children and their family in terms of future, more specific preventive action. Some preliminary results of the data systematically collected by the members of GREPA illustrate this position taken by the authors.