Youth injury data in the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program: do they represent the Canadian experience?

Injuries to Canadian youth (11-15yrs) identified from a population based health survey (World Health Organization- Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children Survey, or WHO-HBSC) were compared with youth injuries from a national, emergency department based surveillance system, the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRPP). Comparisons focused on external causes of injury, and examined whether similar rankings of injury patterns and hence priorities for intervention were identified by the two different systems. The study concludes that the two sub-sets of CHIRPP data and the WHO-HBSC data identified similar priorities for injury prevention among young people. Findings indicate that CHIRPP may be representative of general youth injury patterns in Canada. This study provides a novel and practical model for the validation of injury surveillance programmes.