Safety Street

Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death among children ages one and older and are a common cause of emergency department visits at St. Louis Children's Hospital. Safety Street is an interactive mobile safety exhibit that provides education about pedestrian, home, and vehicle safety to children ages 5 to 11. The interactive exhibit presents children with life-like neighborhood scenarios where they are taught how to make the safest choices. The intervention is implemented in schools and community sites. Parents and hospital volunteers assist program staff in teaching curriculum to children. Children are given a pre-test and post-test to assess their safety knowledge.

The curriculum--incorporating both Missouri and Illinois State Department of Education standards--is divided into two parts for two age groups. Children ages 5 to 8 learn lessons on pedestrian, bicycle, and motor vehicle safety, and stranger and stray animal awareness. Teachers are given a curriculum guide with six lessons to conduct in the classroom after pre-testing to provide additional information prior to the hands-on experience in the exhibit. Children ages 9 to 11 learn about playground/sports, water, motor vehicle and bicycle safety along with recognizing fire, burn ,and poison hazards. Safety Street utilizes several tools to implement the intervention including a standard script for volunteers, curriculum worksheets, interactive handout/map for kids, videos, and poison displays.

Safety Street is a St. Louis Children's Hospital community outreach program originally funded by a grant from Kohl's department stores.

The mission of Safety Street is to increase injury prevention knowledge for children through interactive teaching of pedestrian, home, and vehicle safety.

During the 2011-2012 school year, Safety Street visited 13 sites and taught children from 35 schools, reaching 6,302 children in the school-based version of the intervention. An additional 1,600 children were seen at community sites.

The program was evaluated using a pre-test and post-test single-group design, measuring knowledge gained from this intervention. A random sample of classes at participating schools was selected to participate in the assessment. Testing was administered using the Classroom Participatory Response System by eInstruction, Inc. The pre-test was taken by 2,221 students and the post-test was taken by 2,137 students. Results of the pre-tests and post-tests were analyzed using SPSS 19.0. The mean scores were compared using the independent samples t-test. Five to eight-year-olds increased knowledge by 21.8% (95% CI: 20.3%-23.3%, p <0.001). Mean scores improved 11.4% (95% CI: 9.1%-13.4%, p<0.001) for 9 to 11-year-olds.

With statistically significant improvements in mean test scores, Safety Street is a proven way to teach children about home and pedestrian safety. The evaluation results have been presented to audiences in poster and abstract form at multiple national conferences.