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WHO recognizes Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research |
Are you living in a "safe community?"
If you’re not, you may be before long. Chances are there’s one in its formative stages near you, and now the University of Alberta is host to an organization that will help support and nurture this concept across the province.
On November 20, the World Health Organization (WHO) Safe Community Network raised its flag over the University of Alberta campus, as the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research (ACICR) officially became one of only three WHO Affiliate Safe Community Support Centres in the world.
The safe communities movement got its start in Sweden in the late 1970s. The idea was to involve communities in the development of their own injury prevention programs and local surveillance. After all, who knows a community better than the members of the community themselves? By combining this neighbor-to-neighbor passion for change with the latest injury control research and programming from around the world, the stage was set for a revolution in community-based advocacy to reduce injury.
This "bottom-up" approach to injury prevention planning resulted in a 27 per cent reduction in injuries in a test community in Falkoping, Sweden between 1979 and 1981. The Swedish success launched the movement onto the international stage, and recognition from the World Health Organization through the creation of the Safe Community Network soon followed.
Today, the WHO Safe Community Network has 39 member communities around the world, including Canada’s only WHO Safe Community in Fort McMurray, Alberta. The efforts of these communities, as well as the applications to join the Safe Community Network from dozens more communities, are supported by the Safe Community Network’s three Affiliate Safe Community Support Centres.
"In the last two years, injury control and prevention have been exploding on the World Health Organization scene," said Dr. Leif Svanstrom, of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Community Safety Promotion, who was in Edmonton to officially bestow the Affiliate Safe Community Support Centre designation on the ACICR.
"You have a wide undertaking in injury control," said Svanstrom. "I’m very happy you’re adopting the safe communities model as part of that. With the new ACICR designation, there will be more WHO Safe Communities to come in North America."
The designation is both an honor and a challenge for the ACICR, a provincial centre within the U of A’s Faculty of Medicine and Oral Health Sciences, Department of Public Health Sciences, said Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti, chair of the ACICR’s Advisory Body.
"The real work is just about to start. We need to make sure that things happen at the community level, and that we provide all the support we can to communities who want to work with us."
The ACICR is not the only active advocate of the safe communities movement in Canada. The Safe Communities Foundation, based in Toronto, has the same WHO Affiliate Safe Community Support Centre status as the ACICR. It has its own set of national membership criteria and raises funds from the private sector to support Canadian safe communities. To date, there are 15 communities in Canada—including Medicine Hat, Strathcona County, Lakeland Region and High River in Alberta—receiving support from the foundation.
Whether a safe community is recognized internationally by the WHO or nationally by the Safe Communities Foundation, the basic philosophy is the same. The ACICR’s job is to help communities find what they need to develop sound injury control strategies, said ACICR Executive Director Joanne Vincenten.
"We realize that research that comes from our centre and others in the injury control field will be key in helping injury control practitioners identify priority needs and develop effective injury control programs.
"But all the research in the world won’t make our province safer without practical, community-based understanding, commitment and action on injury control."
As an Affiliate Safe Community Support Centre, the ACICR has hung out its "open for business" sign to the province in terms of community-based injury control. That invitation marks the first time injury control practitioners in Alberta have such an extensive array of resources available from one source.
"This designation is more than just a title to us," said Vincenten. "It is a responsibility we intend to honor—to help safe communities across the province reduce the toll of injury."
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