The Effect of Health Risk Behaviors on Recurrent Traffic Injury

Traffic injury is the leading cause of death among injuries for Taiwanese. In our pilot study, we analyzed the admission rate by external code of ICD 9 using National Health Insurance Research Database from 2000 to 2011. The traffic injured inpatient rate was ranked top one. 7.38% of injured inpatient cases were admitted due to the same type of injury. The probability of recurrent traffic injury was 6.43%. Forty percent or reinjury were found within one year. Traffic injury has been considered as a process of disease, consequences of series of unmanaged risk events. To identify the high risk groups of recurrent traffic injury and to determine the associated health risk behaviors are very crucial for development of effective injury prevention programs. The purposes of this study are to determine incidence of the recurrent traffic injuries, the time interval between recurrent traffic injuries, and the associated health risk behaviors of recurrent injury using a 3-years multi-stage study design. Traffic injury adults admitted in ER will be recruited and interviewed to collect the information of physiologic factors, health risk behaviors, attitude and avoidance behaviors of injury, and environmental factors by telephone interview. A recurrent traffic injury risk assessment tool will be developed using the baseline data. Different risk of recurrent traffic injury cohort will be assigned using the recurrent traffic injury risk assessment tool. Participating cohorts will be followed to collect the information regarding any new traffic injury and change of risk factors every 6 month in one year period by telephone interview. The anticipated study results will help to understand the epidemiologic mechanism of recurrent traffic injury. The recurrent traffic injury risk assessment tool will help traffic injury programs identify people who are at risk for recurrent traffic injuries, and develop tailored preventive strategies.