February 2021: Burn Awareness & Prevention
/Over 300 children are treated in emergency departments for burn-related injuries every day in the United States. Children can experience burns from everyday things in the home, like food, bathwater, and electrical cords. Keep these tips in mind to help prevent burns:
Keep hot items out of reach. Never leave hot devices, like clothing irons and hair straighteners, unattended while plugged in. When not in use, store these items unplugged and out of reach.
Take caution with hot food and drinks. Don't cook, drink, or carry hot beverages or food while holding a child. Use travel mugs or cups with tight-fitting lids for coffee and other hot drinks, even when at home. Turn the handles of pots and pans toward the rear of the stove and use back burners when possible. Never leave the stove unattended when cooking.
Test bathwater temperature. Test the water with your wrist or elbow to make sure that the water feels warm, not hot, before placing a child in the tub. Set the thermostat on your hot water heater to 120 F (48.9 C).
Set up a child safety fencing around the fireplace. Child safety fencing is designed to keep children a safe distance from the fire and hot fireplace screens, which can reach dangerously high temperatures and can take over an hour to cool down.
Check electrical cords. Replace frayed, broken or worn electrical cords to help prevent electrical burns.
National Burn Awareness Week is February 7th - 14th, 2021. This annual event is a great opportunity for burn care organizations, burn survivor support groups, public safety, and injury prevention professionals to increase awareness of the frequency and causes of burn injury to the parents and caregivers they serve. The theme for 2021 is Electrical Safety from Amps to Zap (A to Z)! Learn more about the awareness week and what you can do to support the event here.
Toolkit Outreach Week: Home Exercise Equipment Safety
Join us for our outreach week February 8th - 14th using our toolkit on home exercise equipment safety. Treadmills, stationary bikes, and weight sets might be just what you need to reach your fitness goals, but for kids, they can be hazardous. Review the toolkit and add home exercise equipment safety to your outreach plans.
Survey: Webinar Series
We are planning a webinar series and would like input from our membership. Are there specific topics you’d like to learn more about? Any individuals or organizations you would like to present? Please share your opinions and preferences with us in our survey.
Take Action
Every month, we are promoting a new action that each family can take to keep their children safer while social distancing. This month, we want every family to set their water heaters to 120 degrees F (49 degrees C) to prevent painful and dangerous scalds. Always check the temperature of bathwater to make sure it’s not too hot before placing a child in the water.
Follow along every month for a new action, and share with us how you're preventing child injury in your home!
Coming Up
On Our Twitter Calendar
Feb. 1 - 7: TV Tip-Overs
Feb. 8 - 14: Home Exercise Equipment Toolkit Outreach Week
Feb. 15 - 21: Burn Awareness Week
Feb. 22 - 28: Button Batteries
Events
Enter the American Burn Association’s Burn Prevention Poster Contest. “Posters may address contact burns, scalds, any single burn or fire prevention problem, a specific population, or multiple etiologies. Posters will be evaluated according to originality of the idea, creativity, quality of the verbal and graphic message, the immediate clarity and positive tone of the message the poster conveys, as well as composition, and other elements of design.” Learn more about the contest and submit your poster here. Deadline for entries is February 15th, 2021.
Injury Prevention Research Center at Emory (IPRCE) will co-sponsor a workshop for "Practical Evaluation Skills for Public Health Practitioners" with Region IV Public Health Training Center on February 23rd, 2021 from 8:45am-12pm EST. This workshop is designed for people who are familiar with the value of evaluation and are looking to hone their practical evaluation skills. This course has limited capacity and will be offered to IPRCE partners and affiliates only. Register here for the event.