The Injury Prevention Summit 2023, hosted by Injury Matters through the Know Injury program, was held on May 11th at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre. The Summit’s theme was ‘Injury is everyone’s business’, showcasing the importance of sharing knowledge and building capacity in key emerging issues in the injury prevention space, ranging from alcohol-related injury to a safer built environment.
The event saw online and in-person attendees, with 131 delegates attending the full-day event. The day started out with a warm Welcome to Country from Walter McGuire, followed by a welcoming address from Injury Matters’ acting CEO Rachel Meade, and an inspiring opening address from Jodie Nikolic who is a Paraplegic Benefit Fund speaker. The event was MC’d by Injury Prevention General Manager, Samantha Menezes.
The Summit had three sessions throughout the day; session 1 was ‘Evidence-informed injury prevention’ which had Dr. Denise Sullivan as a keynote speaker talk about the Injury Prevention sector, emerging issues as well as challenges and possible solutions within the sector. This was followed by Dr. Delia Hendrie, talking through the Cost of Injury report findings, and Lauren Humphreys on the use of Power BI as a visual data tool for data dissemination in the sector.
The second session was on ‘Safe Streets’, with Lucy Saunders, founder of the Healthy Streets framework, joining online from Germany to provide a keynote presentation on the use of the framework and why safe streets are an important factor to consider when preventing injury. This was followed by Tim Judd from PJA who provided a local context to the Healthy Streets Framework. Katherine Celenza from WA Local Government Association gave a local government context to why safer urban design is important and what role local governments can play in making better street design choices.
The third and last session was a cross-cutting injury risk factor throughout all sessions – ‘Preventing harm from alcohol’, with Professor Tanya Chikritzhs providing a keynote on where we would be without alcohol in WA, and the latest injury statistics on alcohol. Jo Woodruff from Holyoake Wheatbelt followed with a presentation on their award-winning program ‘Within Your Wallet’, a successful youth-based alcohol-reducing initiative in regional WA, sharing key takeaways, and closing off with Allison Grainger from The Behaviour Change Collaborative, sharing key findings from her research study on perceived barriers to reducing alcohol consumption in high-risk drinkers.
The event had great panel discussions after every session, and networking opportunities throughout with breaks, and stallholders with interactive activities. It was a great way to meet and network with other key health professionals in the sector.
“Very professional and well-organised day! Good range of speakers/presentations. Also loved the panel discussions after each group. Well done!”
“Absolutely loved the day. The alcohol session was my absolute favourite. Loved hearing about current initiatives and research.”
“Excellent. Well organised. Brilliant speakers. Highly professional and very current, interesting info. Great engagement and networking opportunities.”
Injury Matters hold the Summit every two years, with ongoing opportunities to connect with the sector through our trainings and events, as well as our online networking CONNECT.ed program.
Some key takeaways from the Injury Prevention Summit 2023 can be viewed on the Injury Matters website through summary factsheets that have recently been released for Session 1, Session 2, and Session 3. Access the resources below.
