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Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies (CChIPS)

The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the Center author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Center Overview

The Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies (CChIPS) mission is to advance the safety of children, youth and young adults by facilitating research on the causes and consequence of injury and how the findings can be translated into commercial products and educational programs for preventing injuries.

Much of CChIPS' current research is focused on preventing road traffic injuries and deaths. The CChIPS research method applies the broad and diverse backgrounds of its investigators to create and implement novel integrated approaches. For example, child crash injury-related research uses biomechanical epidemiology, an approach developed by CChIPS investigators whereby engineering questions are answered with the rigorous methods used for clinical research studies. Its research portfolio expands as needed to address emerging issues. CChIPS' technical focus leverages the existing capabilities, interests, and expertise of CChIPS faculty members and industrial partners to address market-driven, research-informed traffic safety issues for youth.

Universities

Florida Atlantic University
Ohio State University
Florida International University

View Center Website

Center Personnel

John Bolte
Center Staff
+1 614 688 8735
bolte.6@osu.edu

Flaura Winston
Center Staff
+1 267 426 0122
flaura@mail.med.upenn.edu

Research Focus

CChIPS conducts research in five areas of traffic injury prevention:

Evaluation of safety devices or behavior modification programs

CChIPS uses diverse, rigorous methods in the laboratory, the community and online to evaluate the impact of technological and behavioral interventions on child injury and safety. The goal is to ensure that current and planned safety strategies in the real world are effective.

How humans interact and behave in relation to safety technology

CChIPS applies culturally sensitive, theoretically grounded behavioral models to guide development and evaluation of safety promotion interventions and user-centered products. The goal is to provide the scientific foundation to fuel innovations in safety behavior promotion and effective, real-world use of safety technologies.

Injury biomechanics, mechanisms, and tolerance

CChIPS studies age-based changes in the response of human tissues to mechanical loads, and the delineation of child injury mechanisms. The goal is to provide the scientific foundation to fuel evidence-based, effective safety technological innovation and regulatory test devices and protocols.

Safety promotion and education:

Perform evidence-based translation and evaluation of safety programming. Goal: Inform enhancements in safety promotion and educational strategies underway among industry, government, and advocates to improve the protection of children.

Technological solutions (design, development, and testing)

CChIPS supports innovations and improvements in the biofidelity (representative of the properties of children) of the anthropomorphic test device (crash test dummy), computational models, and other safety devices so that testing produces accurate results. The goal is to inform enhancements in federal safety regulatory priorities, new safety product development, and trauma medical protocols

Awards

1650541

Phase III I/UCRC Ohio State University: Center for Child Prevention Studies (CChIPS)

According to recent data released by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), unintentional injury is the number one cause of death for individuals between 1 - 24 years old. For these ages, car crashes were the leading cause of unintentional injury death. Despite recent improvements in car crash safety, these numbers demonstrate a need for continued research into the safety of children in car crashes and thus the continued need for the Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies (CCHiPS). CChIPS primary focus is on motor vehicle crashes. Each year in the United States, over 1,500,000 children are occupants in motor vehicle crashes with close to 1,200 children sustaining fatal injuries, while more than 169,000 children are non-fatally injured, leading to substantial loss of productivity in the young. CChIPS advances child safety through pre-competitive research and translation of engineering, behavioral and epidemiologic research findings into commercial applications, interventions, policies, and public education programs for prevention. Injury prevention involves reducing exposure to energy to levels below human tolerance limits and managing the injuries should they occur. Adult solutions are not appropriate for children who are not small adults - biomechanically, developmentally, and behaviorally and solutions need to dramatically change to accommodate growth and development. The research conducted by CChIPS is published in leading scientific and engineering journals and conferences and the results are cited as transformative regarding knowledge of how children, youth and young adults are injured and how to best protect them. The Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies (CChIPS) is the nation's only IUCRC focused on child injury prevention, with a specific emphasis on injury due to car crashes. The mission of CChIPS is to advance the safety of children, youth, and young adults by conducting research focused on their injuries and translating the findings into commercial applications, interventions, policies, and public education programs for prevention. The technical focus of the Ohio State CCHiPS site will include special emphasis on two areas: (1) crash test dummy development (2) public education and outreach. Crash test dummies are an important safety tool used by manufacturers to design and tests child restraint systems (CRS), thus it is critical to continue to improve the dummies. The main focus of the OSU site will be to continue to assist in improving the ability of the dummy to predict occupant safety, which will help lead to the development of better CRS for our children and youth. Unfortunately, the benefit from improved CRS might be lost according to research showing that up to 75% of the seats are improperly installed. The OSU CChIPS site began a public outreach and education initiative to translate research findings and to promote child passenger safety to parents and caregivers. This initiative, called ?Buckle Up With Brutus? provides proper car seat usage information through its website (http://www.buckleup.osu.edu), social media, and community events. Further research will be focused on this outreach program with a goal of reducing the misuse of CRS by parents and care givers. The CChIPS Site at OSU, housed within the Injury Biomechanics Research Center (IBRC), brings together an interdisciplinary team of engineers, anatomists, physicians, and computer modelers who focus on both mechanisms of injury and injury thresholds of the human body. Until recently, the biomechanics research community did not have a deep understanding of the injury mechanisms and response of children and young adults to violent impacts experienced during a car crash. Child and adolescent crash test dummies used to estimate the severity of injury in such populations assumed that children and young adults were smaller versions of adults, thus making it difficult to improve protection for children in automobile crashes. Read More >

1464537

I/UCRC Phase II: Advanced Knowledge Enablement, FAU Site

1539938

I/UCRC Phase III: Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies

This third phase of support for the Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies builds on a strong foundation that will, at the end of five years, transition into sustainability with the help of a broad base of industry and interested government agency support. This Industry/University Cooperative Research Center is the only one devoted to the study of child, youth, and young adult automotive injury and injury prevention; and it applies its leadership position, cutting edge research, and synergistic partnerships to achieve its mission, by facilitating the conduct of scientific inquiry into child automotive injuries and translating these findings into commercial applications, interventions, policies, and public education programs for prevention. The fundamental idea behind the Center is that children, youth, and young adults are not small adults (mechanically, psychologically, developmentally, or socially) and car crash injuries are one of their leading causes of death and acquired disability. Effective interventions, based on sound scientific foundations to car crash injuries in these age groups and their causes, are a national priority. As regulation, technology and consumer behavior and demand become increasingly complex and sophisticated, industry and government research and findings from the Center are able to guide strategies to protect our nation's children. The Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies works collaboratively with industry across five related themes: biomechanics; technological solutions; human factors; safety promotion and education; and evaluation; and over the course of the last ten years the Center has more than quadrupled its dues paying membership from 5 to 22 members, initiating and completing 92 individual research projects that heavily leverage private sector funds. Broader impacts of the Center include student education and engagement in research, promoting the national health by providing fundamental research on child injuries and strategies for prevention, and performing precompetitive research of interest to a wide variety of private sector and governmental sponsors. In this renewal phase (Phase III), Center leadership and its Industrial Advisory Board will continue to refine Center processes that they develop collaboratively to ensure that research carried out by the Center is diverse and responsive to scientific and industry needs. In the new phase, the Center is expanding its intellectual and research reach from automotive injuries and prevention to include those of injuries related to sports and aviation. Read More >