Students across Canada call for safe helmets

Brain Injury Association of Canada
News Release

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TORONTO - A public web-fax campaign demanding safe helmets for all and endorsed by high school students across Canada, will help kick off the 2007 Canadian Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion Conference at Toronto's Westin Harbour Castle, Nov. 11-13.

The Brain Injury Association of Canada will launch its web-fax effort (www.mostisnotenough.ca) during the conference, to encourage support for Bill C-412, currently before the Canadian Parliament. The bill is a start towards ensuring all helmets sold in Canada meet minimum standards set by the Canadian Standards Association.

Thousands of Canadians suffer serious brain and spinal cord injuries each year and many others die of their injuries. In fact, injury of all forms - including motor vehicle crashes, falls, fires, poisoning, drowning, suicide and violence - is the leading cause of death for Canadians aged 1-44. Injury is also the fourth highest economic burden on Canada's health care system.

Every two years, this conference brings together hundreds of Canadian and international professionals working to reduce the number of deaths and disabilities caused by injury, to learn from the latest research and successful programs. It is co-hosted by Canada's leading national injury prevention organizations: Safe Communities Canada, Safe Kids Canada, SMARTRISK and ThinkFirst Canada, with local hosts the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

Conference sessions run the gamut of intentional and unintentional injuries such as:


- Sports and recreation, including a session devoted to ice hockey injuries (featuring body checking and youth injury, and why adult recreational players won't wear eye protection) and another focusing on why men have a rate of catastrophic injury in sports and recreation four times as high as women.

- Impaired driving, including drugged driving and a look at the myths and realities of designated drivers

- Violence and suicide, featuring a plenary speaker who co-founded the Coalition for Gun Control after being a student at Ecole Polytechnique during the 1989 mass shooting; and a keynote address from Barbara Turnbull, who was shot and paralyzed during a convenience store holdup;

- Child and youth injury, including school bus safety

- How Manitoba created a system to ensure its women's shelters are secure, particularly from vindictive spouses.

Details are available at www.injurypreventionconference.ca

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