PC2088: Pop-up Safety Town: Leveling the Playing Field for Children in High-need Communities

Background: Pediatric unintentional injuries are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children. Significant injury disparities are seen in low-resource communities, due to higher exposure to hazards, limited financial resources for safety products, and difficult access to injury prevention education. To address this gap, we leveraged an American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) pilot grant to create Pop-up Safety Town, a community-based injury prevention program for Head Start (HS) children and families. The program was created to address the limitations of conventional Safety Town programming, which is often cost-prohibitive and inaccessible to families outside of affluent school districts. We describe the program’s 1) novel approach to providing injury prevention education; 2) adaptive changes made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; 3) our approach to securing funding partners for creating a sustainable program; and 4) future plans to reach remote HS centers.

Methods: We reimagined the traditional approach to Safety Town by creating a mobile, budget-friendly injury prevention intervention in HS centers in urban and rural communities (Figure 1). “Core” injury prevention programming consisted of helmet, pedestrian, water, animal, electrical, medication, and dental safety stations. Children received free meals, an adjustable helmet, and reading books as incentives. All building props could be “popped-up” in minutes to create a miniature town. (Figure 2). Surveys were used to evaluate sessions and receive qualitative feedback. In the advent of COVID-19, we provided bussing for HS classrooms to come in shifts. Volunteers were recruited from the health professional schools, Washtenaw health department, and Michigan Medicine pediatrics department, which further demonstrated the importance of community pediatrician participation in safety prevention programming.

Results: Between 2018-2020, and 2022, we collaborated with six HS centers to hold 11 events, reaching over 300 families and 550 children. Pop-up Safety Town was paused in 2021 because most HS centers operated virtually during the pandemic. Pilot data demonstrated that HS centers were optimal locations for injury prevention education in resource-poor neighborhoods, with >95% of families reporting they had never received injury prevention education programming before. >50% of children did not own helmets beforehand. In the most recent Whitmore Lake event (March 2022), 93 children and 50 families participated. Parent surveys demonstrated that >94% of caretakers reported they were very comfortable with helmet fitting, and 100% of caretakers found the session very helpful.

Conclusion: Pop-up Safety Town is a novel upstream injury prevention approach for HS families. In order to make Pop-up Safety Town sustainable, we approached local and national partners (AAA Auto Club Foundation) and successfully secured funding. We’re working towards sustainability by designing a year-long curriculum allowing HS teachers to reinforce concepts throughout the school year and creating a virtual Pop-up Safety Town program for HS centers located in American Indian and Migrant communities.