Playground Safety and Injury Prevention
Health care professionals at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center provide tips to keep kids safe and prevent injuries at playgrounds.
Warmer weather means kids finally get to leave the confines of home and start exploring the wide world of jungle gyms and playgrounds.
From the longest slide to the swing that goes the highest, there is fun to be had on playgrounds. Often at the center of children's social lives is the playground -- it's where they get to form friendships and develop motor, cognitive and perceptual skills.
Although a center for contests, games and plenty of fun, playgrounds are often the site of unintentional injuries. Each year, over 200,000 children are injured on America's playgrounds. That's one every 2 1/2 minutes.
The leading cause of playground equipment-related fatalities is strangulation. Strangulation results from entanglement or entrapment and accounts for nearly half of the deaths. The majority of these deaths occur on home playgrounds.
Nonfatal playground equipment-related injuries are most often due to falls. The majority of these types of injuries take place on public playgrounds, including school, childcare and park playgrounds.
Preventing Playground Injuries
Lack of supervision is associated with 40 percent of playground injuries.
"It is the responsibility of adults to create play environments that are challenging and safe for children," says Michael Gittelman, MD, attending physician in the Emergency Department at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
"Utilizing age-appropriate equipment, following a regular maintenance schedule, limiting equipment height and maintaining adequate surfacing, combined with adult supervision, can greatly reduce the incidence and severity of playground injuries.
Contact Us
For additional information on this or any Health Topic, please call the Family Resource Center, 513-636-7606, or your pediatrician.
Rev. 1/06
