Focus on Road Traffic Injuries in China: Selections from the Traffic Injury Prevention Special Issue

As part of the Road Safety in 10 Countries project (RS-10), in 2012, the Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit (JH-IIRU) published “Public Health Burden of Road Traffic Injuries: An Assessment from Ten Low- and Middle-Income Countries,” a special issue of Traffic Injury Prevention. This landmark publication includes 11 scientific papers jointly authored with 50 colleagues from JH-IIRU and their in-country collaborators that contribute much-needed new knowledge to the burgeoning issue of road traffic injuries in low- and middle- income countries.

In China, though road traffic injuries have become a leading cause of death, the reported numbers of road traffic deaths are often inconsistent. JH-IIRU team members, including  associate director, Sai Ma and senior technical advisor, David Bishai, along with colleagues from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC), addressed this issue in their publication, “Road Traffic Injury in China: A Review of National Data Sources.”  The team reviewed and compared four national-level data sources: The Ministry of Health-Vital Registration (MOH-VR) system, Chinese CDC-Disease Surveillance Points (DSP), Chinese CDC-National Injury Surveillance System (NISS) and police reports. The team found that, while each system had a number of strengths, no one system provided a complete epidemiological profile of road traffic injuries in China, and some information, such as long-term disability or hospitalization data, is not measured at all. The study does, however, establish a framework for researchers and policy makers to strengthen the existing surveillance systems in order to better track road traffic injuries. This, in turn, will help to develop evidence-based long-term road safety interventions.

For more information on the Road Safety in 10 Countries project, visit our website: http://www.jhsph.edu/iiru/rs10.html

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