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An injury awareness education program on outcomes of juvenile justice offenders in Western Australia: an economic analysis

BACKGROUND: Injury is a major cause of mortality and morbidity of young people and the cost-effectiveness of many injury prevention programs remains uncertain. This study aimed to analyze the costs and benefits of an injury awareness education program, the P.A.R.T.Y. (Prevent Alcohol and Risk-relate...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ho, Kwok M, Geelhoed, Elizabeth, Gope, Monica, Burrell, Maxine, Rao, Sudhakar
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3470939/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22929004
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-12-279
Descripción
Sumario:BACKGROUND: Injury is a major cause of mortality and morbidity of young people and the cost-effectiveness of many injury prevention programs remains uncertain. This study aimed to analyze the costs and benefits of an injury awareness education program, the P.A.R.T.Y. (Prevent Alcohol and Risk-related Trauma in Youth) program, for juvenile justice offenders in Western Australia. METHODS: Costs and benefits analysis based on effectiveness data from a linked-data cohort study on 225 juvenile justice offenders who were referred to the education program and 3434 who were not referred to the program between 2006 and 2011. RESULTS: During the study period, there were 8869 hospitalizations and 113 deaths due to violence or traffic-related injuries among those aged between 14 and 21 in Western Australia. The mean length of hospital stay was 4.6 days, a total of 320 patients (3.6%) needed an intensive care admission with an average length of stay of 6 days. The annual cost saved due to serious injury was $3,765 and the annual net cost of running this program was $33,735. The estimated cost per offence prevented, cost per serious injury avoided, and cost per undiscounted and discounted life year gained were $3,124, $42,169, $8,268 and $17,910, respectively. Increasing the frequency of the program from once per month to once per week would increase its cost-effectiveness substantially. CONCLUSIONS: The P.A.R.T.Y. injury education program involving real-life trauma scenarios was cost-effective in reducing subsequent risk of committing violence or traffic-related offences, injuries, and death for juvenile justice offenders in Western Australia.