Injury & Trauma in Aboriginal Youth and The Alberta Traffic Safety Plan

In this project, youth will develop their own personally relevant Traffic Safety Plans. The goals are to: 1) raise awareness of injury issues relevant to aboriginal youth, 2) provide aboriginal youth with opportunities to practice making healthy choices, and 3) promote optimistic attitudes in aboriginal youth with respect to their ability to make healthy choices in their real worlds. An essential part of the whole experience is understanding that the numbers reflect past statistical likelihoods for groups rather than one's cultural background or individual future, and that people have the power to make their own statistics.

Preventable injury is the leading cause of death and disability in people under the age of 44 in our province, where youth 15-24 years old are at highest risk. Aboriginal youth are at especially high risk of preventable injuries. In general, estimates are that aboriginal people in Canada and in Alberta in particular are from about 1.5 to 5 times more likely than the general population to experience various types of injuries (e.g., injuries related to fatal alcohol-related crashes and crashes in general; falls; violence/purposely inflicted injuries; and suicide/self-inflicted injuries).

The problem has been investigated from multifarious perspectives and found to involve multiple layers of complexity. To illustrate one such layer, research has identified a potentially self-fulfilling prophecy whereby aboriginal youth expect that aboriginal youth will take abnormally high numbers and types of negative risks.

Lakeland P.A.R.T.Y. personnel and the teachers and other community members we work with are familiar with the hurdles this complexity introduces to preventing injury. We see and hear firsthand the tragedy that afflicts our aboriginal youth, especially with respect to traffic safety. At presentations that are part of our regular programming, for instance, youth speak quite frankly about high-risk choices frequently made by themselves, their family, and other community members they know. We regularly hear of casual attitudes toward driving without a license or while under suspension, for instance. We also hear of very low use of seatbelts and helmets and high rates of reckless stunting on bicycles and ATVs as well as in motor vehicles. Something else we regularly hear are stories of young people riding with a driver or being the driver who has used drugs or alcohol, along with the often tragic consequences. A particularly compelling anecdote in this regard came from a young girl who told us that, faced with the choice to get in a vehicle with a driver who was impaired, she considered what she had experienced at her recent P.A.R.T.Y. program and thus decided to not get in the vehicle – unfortunately, the driver drove anyway and was involved in a severe collision where one passenger was brutally and permanently disfigured.

To help deal with the problem, staff at First Nations schools and a local Friendship Centre have asked the Lakeland P.A.R.T.Y. Program Association to provide more frequent injury prevention programming to their students and expand our targets to both younger and older than the grade 9s we target with our regular programming. Accordingly, we are working with schools and other organizatios to deliver injury prevention sessions to aboriginal youth, focusing on impaired driving injuries, seatbelt use, speeding, and stunting, as well as other topics related to traffic safety (e.g., ATV-related injuries) that aboriginal youth are likely to be involved in, as identified by the youth themselves, teachers, emergency services personnel, etc.