This award initiates the Industry/University Cooperative Research Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. The Center's research will study how children experience trauma in vehicles and what can be engineered to make them safe.
The Center's research agenda will be initiated with projects in Effect of High Back Booster Seat Seating Angle and Seat Belt Positioning on Injury Metrics of a 6-Year-Old; Misuse Study of LATCH Attachments: A Series of Sled Tests; Lower Extremity Injuries in Children Seated in Forward Facing Child Restraint Systems; Identifying Motor Vehicle Crash Characteristics for Anatomic-specific Fatal Injuries in Child Occupants; Cervical Range of Motion in Young Children.
(CChIPS) at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is a National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) that focuses exclusively on making children and adolescents safer. Hosted by The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute, one of the largest pediatric research facilities in the country, CChIPS takes a unique approach to child safety research. Through CChIPS, researchers from CHOP, The University of Pennsylvania and The Ohio State University (joined in Phase 2) work side by side with industry members to conduct translational research that is practical to industry. This synergistic collaboration between industry and academia creates an ideal environment to generate ideas for new research projects and to leverage shared expertise and resources. CChIPS was created to address the predominant mechanism of child death – road traffic injury. The fundamental idea behind its work is that children are not small adults (mechanically, psychologically, developmentally, and socially). As automotive design and consumer behavior become increasingly complex, enhanced research and outreach efforts are necessary to further child safety. Therefore, child injury deserves to be examined and understood as a distinct branch of science. The CChIPS method applies the science of biomechanical epidemiology to the analysis of crash-related data. A unique and comprehensive approach, biomechanical epidemiology integrates the principles of engineering, behavioral science, and epidemiology into study designs. In just five years CChIPS has conducted 43 research projects, with investigators partnering with leading automotive manufacturers, restraint suppliers, insurance providers and government agencies to translate their findings into tangible innovations in safety technology and public education programs. As an example of a specific research result, a project lead by Dr. Kristy Arbogast aimed to discover better ways to protect children in side-impact motor vehicle crashes. Dr. Arbogast sought to document the probable body-region contact points in the vehicle interior for children in child restraint systems (CRS) in side-impact crashes. Two in-depth crash investigation databases, the Crash Injury Research and Engineering Network and the Partners for Child Passenger Safety Study, were queried for rear-seated, CRS-restrained children ages 0 to 8 years in side impact crashes who sustained clinically important injuries. A multidisciplinary team of physicians and engineers reviewed the cases to describe injury patterns, injury causation, and vehicle components contributing to the injuries; 41 occupants met the inclusion criteria (average age 2.6 years), with 24 seated near the side of the crash, 7 seated on the far side, and 10 seated in the center. The most common injuries were to the skull and brain, with a greater proportion of skull fractures occurring with increasing age. Lung contusions and spinal injuries were also reported. Near-side head and face contact points occurred along the rear vertical plane of the window and the horizontal plane of the windowsill. Head and face contact points for center- and far-side occupants were along the edges of the front seat back and front seat head restraint. For more information, visit www.chop.edu/cchips
