Injury prevention photoshphere: Final report for the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute TRACK Award

The overall aim of this project is to adapt an existing technology (photosphere) to be used to identify hazards to prevent injuries to children in the home environment. The EBI TRACK Award enabled us to conduct the essential development and refinement of the prototype injury prevention photosphere (IPP). The work carried out during this phase of the project has resulted in the further development of the IPP for health visitors to use with families to identify injury hazards in the home environment. Currently, there are no interactive resources that health visitors can use. We have produced a pilot platform of the IPP to translate our unique approach into the injury prevention toolkit to be used by local authority and healthcare agencies. From the outset, the photosphere has been co-produced with parents of young children and with health visitors. We undertook focus groups which enabled us to: i) identify the specific user requirements and limitations when using the IPP ii) identify the changes and additions that needed to be made, iii) discuss with participants how and when the IPP might be used. This included using it individually between a health visitor and parent, as well as in health promotion groups in a children’s centre environment. Discussions have also taken place to outline the possible behaviour changes that could be measured and how these outcomes might be collected. We collated the data collected at each of the focus groups to amend and add to the IPP. During the project we met regularly with our co-applicants, led by Professor Ben Hicks, in the Design and Manufacturing Futures (DMF) lab, to discuss amendments and additions to the IPP. The injury prevention photosphere is now in its final pilot stage. An example of the photosphere for the unsafe kitchen can be seen on the link below: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XE-4TAD3fJTyVGSyVAWgWdLPN3hH_5Yx/view?pli=1