It's long been a vexing challenge for road
safety advocates: how to increase the use of child safety restraints and
seat belts among African Americans and Hispanics.
A new study by researchers at the University of Michigan shows there's still work to do: The study, published last month in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine,
finds that black and Hispanic infants and toddlers are unrestrained at
rates 10 times those of white children; among older children, there's a
two-fold difference.
An 8-year-old,
church-based, family-focused initiative by Cincinnati Children's
Hospital Medical Center and automaker Toyota is helping make a dent. The
program, Buckle Up for Life, works through churches to overcome
cultural, educational and economic barriers to restraint use by
minorities.
Over a six-week period, people are
taught the safety implications of not buckling up and restraining their
children. They can get free car seats, and experts help install them
properly. Restraint usage at Cincinnati-area churches jumped
significantly after the program was implemented, according to studies by
the hospital and Toyota.
The program is
offered in churches in Cincinnati, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Antonio,
Houston and Las Vegas, and there are plans to expand this year to
Philadelphia and Orange County, Calif., and to other cities next year.
More than 45,000 people have completed the program, and more than 20,000
child seats have been distributed, says Patricia Pineda, group vice
president at Toyota Motor North America.
Minorities are not the only Americans who have troubling issues with vehicle restraint, particularly involving children.
The
University of Michigan study found that few parents keep their children
in rear-facing seats until age 2, as recommended by the American
Academy of Pediatrics. Also, many parents allow children 12 and younger
to sit in the front seat, instead of the rear, as recommended by safety
experts.
Those trends are especially
troubling, because motor vehicle crashes are the top killer of children
ages 1-12 in the USA, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration.
Though seat belt use
nationally has risen to 84%, usage is lower than the national average
for African Americans and Hispanics. A study by the NHTSA in 2007 found
that many blacks and Hispanics had negative attitudes about seat belts,
and more than half of those surveyed said seat belts are "just as likely
to harm you as help you."
Sol Villanueva, 20,
of Erlanger, Ky., near Cincinnati, says she first learned the
importance of child restraint use in 2006 when her parents took her and
her little brother to Cristo Rey Church in Erlanger. She says she
recently took her son, Adrian, 2, back to the church for a refresher and
a child seat.
"They tell you about how kids
go flying through the window" if they're not restrained, Villanueva
says. "They show videos of people having accidents because they didn't
place their children in the proper seat. Those were kind of scary."
This
is not the first community-based approach to increasing vehicle
restraint use among minorities. For example, seat belt use among African
Americans increased nationally from 51% in 1996 to 77% in 2002. That
growth was due partly to the efforts of groups such as the NAACP, the
National Urban League, the National Council of Negro Women, Meharry
Medical College and the Congress of National Black Churches, among
others.
"This is not some failing of a
particular race," says Victor Garcia of Cincinnati Children's Hospital, a
co-founder of Buckle Up. "What it is is African Americans and Hispanics
are disproportionately in lower socioeconomic groups."
Among the factors that Garcia says contribute to lack of restraint use:
-- Economic reasons.
"Many parents were simply not able to buy a car seat," he says. In
addition, parents often owned older model vehicles that had no seat
belts or had improperly functioning ones.
-- Educational factors.
"Not everybody you think should be aware is aware of the importance of
seat belts," says Garcia, founding director of trauma services at his
hospital. In the setting of their church, people are given information
about vehicle restraints, sometimes by people who've lost loved ones who
were not restrained.
-- Cultural reasons. Some minority families have no history of using seat belts or child safety seats.
In
addition, Garcia says, "among African Americans, there was a sense of
predeterminism. 'If God is going to take you, he's going to take you.'
But we shared with people that God helps those who help themselves."
USA Today