Adrienne is an exceptional PC in the Injury Free Coalition for Kids. Her passion to provide injury prevention to her communities, her willingness to share innovative injury prevention practices with others, and her dynamic approach to injury prevention all are testament to her excellence as an injury prevention champion for children. Since 2012, Adrienne has served as the injury prevention manager at the Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland, Oregon. She oversees injury prevention strategies.
Dr. Ben Hoffman wrote this. "I have worked with Adrienne for 11 years, initially in our roles as certified Child Passenger Safety (CPS) Technicians at community car seat events. She was working for another program at that time, but I was struck by not only her encyclopedic knowledge about CPS, but also by her engaging demeanor with families, and her obvious leadership skills. When she joined us, we had 1.25 FTE, and our work had a narrow focus on community car seat checks, community bike helmet distribution, and a small safety store in our lobby. Our funding was limited to support from the Kohl's Cares for Kids Foundation, and we lived in constant fear of what would happen should that disappear. Adrienne and I quickly bonded over our shared passions and values, and we created a blueprint for the future that included establishing a CPS fitting station, expanding our safety store services and impact, and engaging the hospital community in a more authentic way. I will spare you the details, but fast forward 10 years, and Adrienne and I have worked together to build a team that is exceptional. We now have staff of 9 health educators, all funded by our hospital. Our staff round on all inpatient units to identify any safety/injury prevention needs, and have a system to provide consultation to any family, inpatient or outpatient. We worked with our risk management team, and within 6 months opened a CPS fitting station at Doernbecher that sees over 1000 visits annually. We have doubled the size of our safety store and are currently providing child safety products to our state child welfare system across Oregon. We have assumed the Dept. of Transportation grant for CPS training, overseeing all activity in Oregon. We are working with a number of community partners to address issues of equality and social justice in child injury. We have collaboratively performed a number of studies, ranging from car seat use at newborn discharge, car seat tolerance screening, firearm storage practices and child drowning that have been published in peer reviewed literature, and led to significant state policy change. We have indeed gone together from nothing, to everything. And for this one can only blame Adrienne.
Violet Larry of the Healthy Birth Initiatives of the Multnomah County Health Department in Oregon wrote that her organization has partnered with Adrienne on safe sleep and safe firearm storage to serve underserved African American families in their communities. She noted that "we cannot say enough about Adrienne's dedication and desire to do whatever it takes to keep children safe...She is generous, creative, and always willing to partner with us to keep the children in our community safe....She has been a wonderful support to our families and we appreciate her"...
Adrienne is a very active injury prevention expert with Injury Free. Serving on the Injury Free Board, Adrienne is always ready to pitch in and share her injury prevention strategies. In one area, Adrienne shared with the board the problems of "fake" car seats and how her site is education their families on these problem car seats. Adrienne, congratulations on your Injury Free PC of the Year Award!
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