The National Playground Safety Institute believes it is essential to develop and administer a national voluntary certification program for playground safety inspectors. Certified individuals would routinely receive new information and instruction in new procedures. The paper discusses who should receive such certification and how they would be…

Interviews with 21 families who had lost the farm operator or a young person in a fatal farm accident revealed that, in every family, economic difficulties (operating the farm, providing for the family, and managing resources of time, energy, and capital) were entangled in the grief process. Implications for rural counselors and mental health…

Presents a historical overview of injury control and prevention in the United States and offers a summary of current knowledge about the importance of different causes of childhood injury, looking at risk and protective factors that have a bearing on preventive efforts. Injury remains the most important cause of death and disability for children…

This attempt to determine the reliability of the Modified Ashworth Scale for assessing the severity of muscle spasticity for ankle plantarflexors in 30 patients with traumatic brain injury concluded that the reliability was minimally adequate to support the scale's continued use. Interrater reliability was less than that previously reported for…

Four validity scales were developed for the Neuropsychology Behavior and Affect Profile using data from clinical and nonclinical samples. A second study, which involved 157 subjects, indicated that combinations of the clinical and validity scales effectively differentiated dissemblers from brain injury patients, even when dissemblers were highly…

Sports participation can help young people appreciate health, exercise, and fitness; learn about themselves and handling adversity; and experience teamwork and sportsmanship. The key to a good high-school sports program is not winning, but student improvement. Athletic participation and achievement should not determine kids' social status. (MLH)

A sample of 103 intervention outcome studies was considered to confirm best practices for intervention for challenging behavior in persons with intellectual disability and acquired brain injury and to establish service conditions associated with its effectiveness. Evidence supports the effectiveness of behavioral interventions. Problems with…

This article discusses a theory that William Cruickshank had that children with brain injuries would benefit from learning in a classroom environment with plain-colored uniform furniture. The case illustrates that a development in human services that is viewed as a very major at one time can become quickly forgotten. (Contains references.) (CR)

Using Canadian data from the 1998 Cross-National Survey on Health Behaviors in School-Aged Children, the present study examined the effects of school experiences on injury and leisure activities among Canadian students. Health outcomes were classified into two categories: injury (with and without medical treatment) and leisure activities (time…

Those who manage physical education, athletic, and recreation programs have a number of legal duties that they are expected to carry out. Among these are an obligation to take reasonable precautions to ensure safe programs and facilities for all participants, spectators, and staff. Physical education and sports facilities that are poorly planned,…

The purpose of this study was to examine changes in landing performance during fatigue that could result in increased stress fracture injury risk. Five participants performed nonfatigued and fatigued drop landings (0.60 m), while ground reaction force (GRF), electromyographic (EMG) activity, and kinematics were recorded. Fatigue was defined as a…

The aim of the present study was to determine whether monitoring measures are differentially disturbed in dysexecutive patients after frontal lesions. Twelve dysexecutive patients and 12 healthy controls were administered a paired-associates learning task. Their performances on recall prediction, judgment-of-learning (JOL), and feeling-of-knowing…

Purpose: Discourse characteristics of adults with right hemisphere brain damage are similar to those reported for healthy older adults, prompting the question of whether changes are due to neurological lesions or normal aging processes. The clinical relevance of potential differences across groups was examined through ratings by speech-language…

People with mental retardation, autism, and related developmental disabilities who self-injure are treated with a wide array of behavioral techniques and psychotropic medications. Despite numerous reports documenting short-term and some long-term changes in self-injury associated with the opiate antagonist naltrexone hydrochloride, no quantitative…

Roughly 20 per cent of all students in higher education have sustained clinically significant head injuries during childhood or adolescence. Although these injuries typically do not seem to lead to any long-term intellectual deficits, little is known about their possible impact upon the students' academic attainment. Nevertheless, many…