TY - JOUR PY - 2012// TI - Caution! Paradigm shift ahead: 'Adolescent mobility health' JO - Injury prevention A1 - Weiss, H. SP - A13 EP - A14 VL - 18 IS - Suppl 1 N2 - Background Adolescents belong to an age group warranting special transport and mobility research and programmes. From a road safety perspective, they carry the largest crash and morbidity/mortality risk of any age group. This has led to considerable research and safety programmes, but these efforts have plateaued in many countries and remain fixed within a road safety perspective. From a broader perspective, little has been done about the many non-traffic health risks related to teen driving (increased drug and alcohol use, anti-social behaviour, sexually transmitted infections, inactivity and obesity). From a sustainable transport perspective, a contemporary imperative, teens are where the transition from non-driver to driver takes place; an opportune time for interventions to minimise environmental harms. Methods We introduce a new paradigm termed 'mobility health' to bridge the siloed domains of safety, adolescent health and sustainable mobility management. The advantages include: • A school focus makes them an easy population to identify and offers on-going integration into curricula. • Giving youth the freedom to choose their mobility options with knowledge of the benefits and drawbacks of alternatives. • Provides settings where peers, teachers and parents can play important roles so it becomes more than an individual choice. • Healthy mobility habits learned at this age may be engrained for life, making it a smarter investment. Recommendation We advocate changing the current narrow paradigm of adolescent road safety to a cross-level/cross-disciplinary, more potent, timely and healthy vision of less driving through mobility modal shift from cars to active and public transport. This is an abstract of a presentation at Safety 2012, the 11th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion, 1-4 October 2012, Michael Fowler Center, Wellington, New Zealand. Full text does not seem to be available for this abstract.

LA - en SN - 1353-8047 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/injuryprev-2012-040580l.1 ID - ref1 ER -