The Injury Free Coalition for Kids UTHealth/Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital is a hospital-university-community coalition based out of Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital, a pediatric level 1 trauma center based in Houston, Texas. Through our partnerships with UTHealth and CMHH we are focused on collaborating with our community to improve the health and safety of the children not only at CMHH and our UT Clinics, but in the immediate Houston area.
Injury Free UTH/CMHH plans to work together with our communities to identify areas of risk and implement initiatives to meet the unique needs of our pediatric patients. Through the development of interactive programs, we hope to reduce injury in our patients locally, and strive to dedicate our efforts to keep our children and communities thriving.
Our current programs include:
Teen Driving Program: "Live Your Dreams" is our signature teen safety driving program which reaches our to our local youth to educate them on safe driving and empower them to put safe driving practices as a priority in the early driving years.
Safe Sleep Program: Newborn safe sleep education is provided from birth through hospital discharge, emphasizing the ABCs in safe sleep. Each infant is provided with a sleep sack as well as education, not only in our low risk nursery but also in our neonatal intensive care nurseries.
Car Seat Program: We have partnered with our pediatric rehabilitative hospital services at Memorial Hermann Hospital TIRR to provide car seat education, specialty car seats when necessary, and car seats to those facing financial hardship in both our pediatric rehab hospital and our neonatal ICU.
Injury Prevention Education: We have developed novel approaches to medical student and pediatric resident education in general injury prevention as well as firearm safe storage. By training the next generation of providers, we can continue to improve the health and safety of children for many years to come.
Community Outreach: In partnership with local legislators and district attorney offices, we have participated in virtual webinars to discuss firearm safe storage practices to raise awareness with the community on the importance of safe firearm ownership during the covid pandemic.
Program Coordinator:
Sarah Beth Abbott, Injury Prevention and Outreach Education Coordinator
Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital
Sarah.Abbott@memorialhermann.org
Co-PI:
Sandy McKay, MD FAAP
Sandra.McKay@uth.tmc.edu
Co-PI:
Melissa Kwan, MD FAAP
melissa.h.kwan@uth.tmc.edu
