Youth Resilience Education and 13-Year Motor Vehicle Crash Risk

DRIVE is a prospective cohort study of a large ( ≥20 000) nonrepresentative sample of newly licensed young drivers in New South Wales, Australia.1 Its objective is to identify risk and protective factors for motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) (or crashes) by observing subgroup differences over time. A previously observed protective factor was participation in the New South Wales Health Reduce Risk Increase Student Knowledge (RRISK) resilience program.2 RRISK brings together grade 11 students from diverse schools for a 1-day, whole-of-community seminar that is preceded and followed by multiple peer-led teacher and parent support activities. It addresses common youth risks, including alcohol and drug use, partying, and driver and passenger risks. The focus is on empowering students to personalize learning into awareness of their own and their friends ’ risk propensities, contributing factors, and how to minimize these, including forward planning and back-up strategies. The current research aims were to explore whether crash differences by program participation persisted over 13 years and to explore any differences by crash type, including seve rity.
Source: PEDIATRICS - Category: Pediatrics Source Type: research