Department of Health's accidental injury research initiative

In 1999 the Government?s White Paper, Saving Lives, Our Healthier Nationidentified accidental injury as a priority for action. It set national targets to reducethe rates of death associated with accidental injury in England by 2010 by at leastone fifth; and to reduce the rate of serious injury by at least one tenth.In 2000 Heather Ward and Nicola Christie were invited by the Department of Health(DH) to undertake a strategic review of research priorities for accidental injury(Ward and Christie 2000). In our review we looked at the polices and researchprogrammes of Government Departments with responsibilities for reducingaccidental injury or of activities that might lead to injury such as sport. We alsolooked at the research programmes and spend profiles of research councils andcharitable trusts.Two of our main conclusions were:? There is a small amount of injury research aimed at a large injury problem.Multi-disciplinary research is therefore needed to bring about greaterunderstanding of the context in which accidental injury occurs.? Different funders/Departments commission research in different ways whichtends to mean that methodology cultures grow up amongst different groups ofresearchers depending on the style of research methodology favoured by thefunder. This tends to lead to little overlap in research methodology and dissemination practice between different groups of researchers engaged in injuryprevention work, which is a barrier to increasing the capacity to take forward amulti-disciplinary research agenda

A methodology to investigate and visualise the geographical provenance of road traffic casualties in deprived areas

This paper demonstrates a methodology based on spatial overlay techniques, casualty data and national deprivation scores, to quantify and visualise the geographical provenance of road traffic casualties in deprived areas. A case study of four districts with varying deprivation in Greater Manchester, UK is presented. It is shown that most injuries to pedestrians and car occupants occur in areas of similar levels of affluence/deprivation to that of where the casualties live. Thus, it is proposed that the phenomenon underlying the cause of road traffic injuries are probably universal despite the differences in factors such as demography and level of deprivation

Globalization, Party Positions, and the Median Voter

The authors argue that the effects of economic globalization on social democratic parties in Western Europe are conditional on the position of the median voter. If the median is far enough to the right, such parties will adopt business-friendly policies because they are required to win office. Only when the median is relatively far to the left will globalization constrain social democratic parties, forcing them to adopt policies further to the right in order to retain credibility. It is on this basis the authors argue that empirical studies are misspecified unless they include an interaction between measures of globalization and the position of the median. In addition to presenting formal theoretical arguments, the article reports empirical findings from fifteen countries in the period from 1973 to 2002 that support the conclusion that the effects of globalization are indeed contingent on the median. The authors find that the effects of globalization are significant for social democratic parties only in circumstances in which the median is relatively far to the left

Under-reporting of roadcasualties ? phase 1

Although this report was commissioned by the Department for Transport, the findings and recommendations are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the DfT