SafeSmart safety seat intervention project: A successful program for the medically-indigent

Abstract

A study to determine the effect of an educational intervention on the prevalence of safety seat usage in a population of low income mothers was conducted in six randomly selected outpatient care centers in Maricopa County for a period of 1 year. These six centers were subjected to either a control or intervention treatment. Outpatient care centers which were assigned to the intervention treatment received a planned, educational intervention employing coercive, incentive, education and reinforcement approaches. The data indicated that the application of a health education intervention employing a combination of approaches significantly decreased the safety seat non-usage rate from 74.9% to 62.3%, while the rate in the control group remained stable. It was also found that continued health education beyond the 6-month period would not affect the safety seat usage rate significantly. The results of this study point to the potential of an organized, patient education program in positively affecting safety seat usage among children of low income parents in an outpatient setting.