After Minister of Health Promotion Margarett Best opened the conference, keynote speaker Michael Adams began on a hopeful note with his observations on this country’s positive attitudes towards immigrants. The conference’s closing keynote, the colourful face of traffic in Ontario, retired Sgt. Cam Woolley arrived late – held up by traffic collisions.

Following is a roundup of some of the highlights of the Nov. 16-18 conference.

André Picard

Mr. Picard, Globe and Mail public health reporter and best-selling author called injury prevention “a policy area woefully neglected by politicians” and by people in general. He offered a number of possible reasons and offered some fixes.

• The word “accident” is a “weasel word,” Mr. Picard said, and recommended practitioners continue to push people to use more accurate, precise words. The Globe and Mail’s Stylebook now contains an entry on the word, advising journalists to avoid it where possible, he noted.
• A deeply engrained attitude exists that “stuff happens” – guns go off, kids fall from playground equipment, boaters drown – and can’t be prevented. Practitioners must counter with the numbers to illustrate the size of the problem. People nostalgic for the days when safety wasn’t much of a concern should be reminded how many children died or were severely injured.
• Our car culture is also partly to blame, Mr. Picard said, noting that risky driving is celebrated and that police officers would rather chase murderers than ticket scofflaws.
• The health care system values treatment over prevention, he added, noting that recent research suggests 96% of health spending goes to treatment with 4% allocated to prevention.
• The answer lies mainly in better communication, he suggested. Approach the media with stories that offer the numbers and research but also use real stories of people affected by injury.
• Build alliances with others in injury and other affected groups, Mr. Picard urged, such as the Canadian Pediatric Society, Canadian Medical Association, workplace and mental health advocates, the Canadian Association for the 50-Plus. Visit the new federal health minister as a group, he suggested. The national strategy is saleable because it has measurable goals, allowing politicians to take credit for success.

“You can’t be afraid of making enemies and picking fights”, he said, noting that picking a fight with someone like Don Cherry could get media coverage. “You people in injury prevention are way too nice and accommodating.”

Michael Adams

President of Environics and a best-selling author, Mr. Adams offered highlights of his latest work on Canada’s immigration experience.

While Canada’s history on diversity is “far from spotless,” he acknowledged, attitudes changed by the idealistic 1960s and Canada introduced an immigration point system. In the 1970s, we focused on celebrating differences through multiculturalism; these days we’re more focused on attacking barriers to integration.

Canada has welcomed 15 million immigrants since 1901, he said, and 20% of our population is foreign born. Canadians don’t debate whether we should have immigration – we take it for granted. “Our debates are not should we do it, but how do we do it successfully?”

Unlike many countries, Canadians are overwhelmingly in favour of immigration, with 82% seeing it as having a positive economic impact. Mr. Adams made a number of suggestions to improve the immigrant experience. He also suggested the injury prevention community should study its changing demographics and ensure it engages new Canadians in their workforce.

Cam Woolley

Just as he was known for during his lengthy career in the Ontario Provincial Police’s traffic unit, retired Sgt. Woolley began his keynote address with a colourful account of an inebriated driver crashing over a fence, trees and a wall into someone’s kitchen, a collision that resulted in his being a few minutes late for his address.

Now a traffic specialist at television station CP24, Sgt. Woolley recounted how attitudes were fatalistic in the late 1970s – if your number is up, it’s up. By the 1980s, however, baby boomers were less accepting of preventable deaths, he said, especially due to drinking and driving.

He offered examples of how revealing safety problems to the media led to public pressure, which in turn prompted governments to ensure traffic engineers build safer roads, that unsafe commercial trucks now receive much stiffer penalties and that seatbelt laws were tightened.

Sgt. Woolley said he shared amusing stories with the media to get people talking about road safety, especially young people.

Other conference highlights

• ThinkFirst Foundation founder, neurosurgeon Dr. Charles Tator was applauded by delegates when it was announced that he will be inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame release notes Dr. Tator has had a “resounding impact on spinal cord injury research, clinical treatment and prevention, and founded ThinkFirst Canada, a national brain and spinal cord injury foundation.”
• The all-terrain vehicle stream ran throughout the conference and served as a model for an evidence-based approach to any injury prevention issue. Delegates concluded there was an injury prevention role for a variety of players, including manufacturers, policy makers, law enforcement, health care professionals, media, the research community and practitioners.