The World Report examines the five major causes of child injury: road traffic injury, drowning, burns, falls and poisoning. It reviews child injury epidemiology, risk factors, interventions and their effectiveness, and concludes with important strategies to prevent or manage these injuries. It also presents a set of recommendations for governments and others to reduce the burden of child injuries.

The Report states that the greatest proportion of child injury is road traffic injuries, followed by drowning and fire-related burns.  Considerable variation in incidence of injury type is found between low, middle and high income countries. Exposure to injury risk depends greatly on the strength of legislation and its implementation, such as setting and enforcing legal ages for entering into work, driving, and consuming alcohol. Moreover, a range of socioeconomic factors including family income, parental education, single parenting, maternal age and housing are directly associated with rates of child injury. The groups that stand out most clearly with respect to higher injury rates are indigenous populations, who also tend to experience a higher relative rate of poverty than others.

The Report concludes that child injuries are preventable by the application of six basic principles: legislation and regulation, enforcement, product modification, environmental modification, supportive home visits, promotion of affordable safety devices, and education and countries which have designated government focal points for injury have made significant advances in reducing rates of injury.

While Canada has come a long way towards ensuring child safety, a lot more needs to be done including setting up good data collection systems, improved surveillance, consistency of protective legislation across all jurisdictions of Canada and the formulation and full implementation of a national child injury prevention plan.

The well-being of children is high on the policy agenda across the OECD. But what is the actual state of child well-being today? How much are governments spending on children and are they spending it at the right times? What social and family policies have the most impact during children’s earliest years? Is growing up in a single-parent household detrimental to children? Is inequality that persists across generations a threat to child well-being? Doing Better for Children addresses these questions and more.