Active & Safe: Aboriginal child injury prevention guidelines

The Active & Safe: Preventing Unintentional Injury to Aboriginal Children and Young People guidelines promote activity, safety and community strengths to address indigenous child injury and recognise that effective injury prevention for Aboriginal children requires appropriate engagement with Aboriginal communities and involves many groups working collaboratively to ensure coordination, leadership and sustained commitment.

Funded by NSW Health and developed by collaborators from the Australian Health Services Research Institute, the George Institute for Global Health, the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, Kidsafe NSW, and the Australasian Injury Prevention Network, Active & Safe is the result of extensive research undertaken in 2016 with policymakers, injury researchers, practitioners and Aboriginal community members in NSW.

Australian research shows that Aboriginal children have consistently higher rates of injury than non-Aboriginal children. Mortality rates for Australian Indigenous children from injury-related causes are almost five times higher and hospitalisation rates two times higher than the rates for non-Indigenous children.