Often, injuries can be controlled by either preventing an event that causes injury or lessening the impact of such an event. This can occur through education, engineering and design of safety products, enactment and enforcement of policies and laws, economic incentives, and improvements in emergency care. Some examples include the design, oversight, and use of car safety seats and seatbelts, workplace regulations regarding safety practices, vouchers for items such as smoke alarms, and tax incentives for fitting home pools with fences.

There were over 41 million injury-related emergency department (ED) visits in 2004. Among females of all ages, nearly 33 percent of all ED visits were injury-related, compared to 43 percent of all ED visits by males. This represents an annual rate of 13.3 injury-related visits per 100 females compared to 15.4 visits per 100 males (data not shown). Among females, the highest rate of injury-related ED visits occurred among those aged 75 years and older; however, due to the age distribution of the population, they represented only 9.3 percent of all female injury-related ED visits.

Unintentional and intentional injuries represented a higher proportion of ED visits for men than women in 2004. Among women and men aged 18 years and older, unintentional injuries accounted for 20.1 and 27.2 per 100 ED visits, respectively, while intentional injuries represented 1.7 and 3.0 per 100, respectively. Among both women and men, the two most common causes of injury were falls and motor vehicle crashes.

> PIE CHART: Injury-Related Emergency Department Visits for Females, by Age, 2003

> HORIZONTAL BAR CHART: Injury-Related Emergency Department Visits Among Adults Aged 18 and Older, by Sex and Mechanism, 2003