Barriers to Preventing Common Injuries in the World: A Review and Content-Analysis Study

Review and Content-Analyzing of the barriers to prevent most common injuries is a necessity for corresponding planning and policymaking. So this study was performed with the aim of review and content analysis of the literature regarding barriers to injury prevention.

This review study was performed in 2020 and the required data were collected by searching for papers, reports, and other evidence in databases, web sites, and search engines. Six types of injuries were selected: Road Traffic Injuries (RTIs), suicide, falls, domestic violence , gun violence, and burns. Data were analyzed by the content analysis method.

The results of 30 studies were analyzed. The included studies have reported a total of 256 barriers for the prevention of the injuries (traffic injuries: 105, falls: 59, suicide: 30, gun violence: 20, Domestic violence:22 and burns: 20). The content analysis categorized the barriers into 31 categories (traffic injuries: 6, falls: 3, suicide: 4, gun violence: 6, Domestic violence:7 and burn: 5). Analysis of the data resulted in eight general categories of barriers to the prevention of the injuries including: knowledge and awareness barriers, social and cultural barriers, cooperation barriers, scientific evidence barriers, organizational barriers, resource shortages, personal barriers, and the barriers related to healthcare systems.

Limited studies are published on the identification of the barriers to injury prevention. Thus a severe shortage of evidence is seen in this area. The findings of this study can help to make plans and policies for preventing injuries.