Prevent Child Injuries during Home Safety Month
During Home Safety Month—and all year—take some simple hands-on steps to make your home safer. You can protect the ones you love by preventing child injuries at home.
Protect the Ones You Love
More than 9 million children between birth and age 19 are seen for injuries each year in U.S. emergency departments, and injuries are the leading cause of death among children in this age group.
Home Safety Month is an ideal time to learn about the top causes of child injury and the steps you can take to prevent them.
Burns
- Install and maintain smoke alarms in your home.
- Develop and practice a family fire escape plan.
- Set your water heater's thermostat to 120 degrees Fahrenheit or lower.
- Use safe cooking practices, such as never leaving food unattended on the stove.
Drownings
- Install a four-sided isolation fence, with self-closing and self-latching gates, around backyard swimming pools.
- Learn cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and get recertified every two years.
- Supervise young children at all times around bathtubs, swimming pools, and natural bodies of water.
Falls
- Use playground equipment that is properly designed and maintained, and that has a soft landing surface material below.
- Use home safety devices, such as guards on windows that are located above ground-level, stair gates, and guard rails.
- Supervise young children at all times around fall hazards, like stairs and playground equipment.
Poisonings
- Store medicines and other toxic products such as cleaning solutions in locked or childproof cabinets.
- Put the poison control number, 1-800-222-1222, on or near every home telephone.
- Dispose of unused, unneeded, or expired prescription drugs.
Show Your Support—New Social Media Items
Protect the Ones You Love: Child Injuries Are Preventable is a CDC initiative to raise parents' awareness about the leading causes of child injury and how they can be prevented. Free materials include fact sheets, CDC's first report on child injury, state-based data, podcasts, e-cards, and more.
Show your support for keeping children safe from leading causes of injuries—including burns, drowning, falls, poisoning, motor vehicle crashes, and sports!
CDC's Protect the Ones You Love initiative now includes a series of easy-to-use badges and buttons that you can share through social networking sites, blogs, and personal and professional Web sites.
More Information
CDC Resources
- CDC Childhood Injury Report: Patterns of Unintentional Injuries among 0-19 Year Olds in the United States, 2000-2006
- CDC: Protect the Ones You Love Web site
- CDC Healthy Homes Web site
eCards
Podcasts
- Burns [PODCAST (English) - 2:58 minutes]
- Drowning [PODCAST (English) - 3:05 minutes]
- Falls [PODCAST (English) - 2:52 minutes]
- Poisoning ]PODCAST (English) - 2:34 minutes]
Badges and Buttons
External Resources
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