Health Outreach Partners https://outreach-partners.org/2011/05/prevent-poisonings-in-your-community-strategies-and-opportunities-for-health-professionals-serving-rural-and-low-income-populations/ Export date: Fri May 17 3:54:24 2024 / +0000 GMT |
Prevent Poisonings in Your Community - Strategies and Opportunities for Health Professionals Serving Rural and Low-income PopulationsThe Problem Affecting Our Communities This accident could happen to any family: A mother is taking her hypertension medication in the kitchen while cooking dinner after a busy day of work; her young son playing on the floor. Just as she is about to screw the cap back on the bottle, a neighbor rings the doorbell and she leaves her son, as well as the open container of pills, on the kitchen table to answer the door. She returns to find her son has knocked the pills off the kitchen table and is playing with a pile of them. She picks up the pills and worries, “has my child ingested any medication? What should I do and who can help me?†Such accidents are more frequent than you may think. The U.S. Poison Control Centers receive more than 2.5 million human poison exposure calls a year; the majority of these calls concern poisonings among children younger than six[i]. Of all two year-olds in the US, one in 90 will visit the emergency room because of medication poisoning[ii]. Because medication often looks almost identical to candy, children are much more likely to accidentally consume pills they find. What Can I Do? Outreach workers and health educators can illustrate how difficult it is to distinguish between medication and candy by having parents and community members participate in an interactive and fun online game. It’s called “Pills versus Candy†(www.pillsvscandy.com 1) and was created by the California Poison Control System (CPCS). If you or a colleague uses this tool to design a health education activity, be sure to also provide the CPCS prevention steps listed below to participants:
Health professionals serving rural and/or low-income populations should be especially aware of poison prevention measures. Children in rural areas are more susceptible to die from poisonings as they live farther from hospitals and poison treatment centers; people living in impoverished neighborhoods also have a disproportionate risk of being poisoned, as compared to the general population[iii]. [i] Bronstein AC, Spyker DA, Cantilena LR, Green JL, Rumack BH, Giffin SL. 2009 Annual Report of the American Association of Poison Control Centers’ National Poison Data System (NPDS): 27th Annual Report. Clinical Toxicology 2010; 48: 979-1178 [ii] Schillie SF, Shehab, N, Thomas, KE, Budnitz DS. Medication overdoses leading to emergency department visits among children. American Journal of Preventative Medicine 2009;37:181-187 |
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Post date: 2011-05-01 15:46:39 Post date GMT: 2011-05-01 15:46:39 Post modified date: 2022-12-08 09:19:28 Post modified date GMT: 2022-12-08 17:19:28 |
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