To SAVIR members,

Injury prevention professionals are anticipating a possible increase in child maltreatment and unintentional injury in the home due to the increase in time families are spending at home, increased stress levels on family, potentially unsafe settings, and decreased visibility by those outside the home in the current COVID19 climate. While it will be important for researchers to study this over time, there are actions we can take now to address this issue.

Injury prevention professionals around the US will be using #StayAtHomeSafety starting today to share resources and give families tips and activities they can do to help reduce the risk of these types of injuries.

Twitter chat participation and promotion

Today, Wednesday, March 25th will be the day the #StayAtHomeSafety will launch. You can start using it right away to promote the concept and the Twitter chat. Here are some other actions you can take to help families get information about this important topic.

1. Go to www.preventchildinjury.org/COVID19 . This will be the place for all of the resources for this hashtag.  Right now you will find a graphic that can be used to promote the Twitter chat. More graphics will be coming by Wednesday morning and throughout the coming weeks. Make sure to bookmark the page and come back periodically to see what is new.
2. Promote the Twitter chat far and wide
3. Take a look at the Twitter chat questions which are posted on the above link. This will help you prepare for the chat today. If you are new to Twitter chats, there is a link on the page that will help give you some tips on how to participate. 
   1. When creating tweets:
      • think about simple steps or activities that families can do today to prevent injuries
      • try to keep the steps/activities relatively simple, with little or no cost
      • think about children of different ages and different living situations
      • provide links to trusted resources families can go to for more information (either the resources listed on the page above or ones of your own)
4. Share this information with any of your peers or others that might have something to contribute both to the Twitter chat and posts in the future. The more people/organizations we get talking about this the safer our families will be.

After the chat

Our hope is that today will just be the start. We would love to see this hashtag continue to be used in the weeks to come to promote resources and ideas to help parents and caregivers keep their families injury free during this time. 

On behalf of all who are participating in #StayAtHomeSafe, we hope you will join us in getting the word out about this important topic.

Thank You

Thank you to all the organizations that have already signed on to participate in sharing information on this important topic.

AAP

Parents Magazine

Safe Kids Worldwide

Children’s Safety Network

Consumer Federation of America

Central Ohio Poison Center

Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital

Columbia Center for Injury Science and Prevention

Injury Free Coalition for Kids

Injury Prevention Research Center at Emory

Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy

University of Iowa Injury Prevention Research Center

University of Michigan Injury Prevention Center

Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center

FCAAP

Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta

Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research