Unintentional injury in New Zealand: Priorities and future directions

This article provides an overview of research conducted in New Zealand on unintentional injury. It demonstrates the areas where a well-established body of research exists and describes the key findings. The published research is considered under three headings: (1) external causes, (2) populations at risk and (3) key activities associated with injury which are not well captured by external causes (e.g. sport injuries). From the overview of injury mortality and morbidity, motor-vehicle traffic crashes, falls and drowning are the most common causes of death and hospitalization. In New Zealand, the young and the elderly are particularly vulnerable to injury. Injury is the leading cause of death and the second leading cause of hospitalization for children and adolescents. Finally, ICD external cause codes are shown as poor descriptors of the frequency of different types of injury events and location of injury events in New Zealand. For example, sport and occupational injury are not well captured by external cause classification.