Safe Kids Florida

Vision:  Safe Kids Florida will be a leader in promoting children's safety and preventing unintentional childhood injuries.

Mission:  The mission of Safe Kids Florida is to prevent/reduce the number of unintentional injuries and deaths among children ages 0-19 years.

Overview

Each year, approximately one out of ten Florida children, ages 19 and under, are injured seriously enough to require a visit to the emergency department or admission to the hospital for medical treatment. Safe Kids Florida is part of Safe Kids Worldwide. The Florida Department of Health, Injury Prevention Section, is the lead organization for Safe Kids Florida. There are currently 15 local Safe Kids coalitions covering 42 counties throughout Florida. More than 85 percent of Florida’s children ages 19 and under live in a county where Safe Kids operates.

Did You Know?
In 2020 when the world shut down, Safe Kids coalitions in Florida found alternative ways to reach their communities, including setting up virtual seat checks, delivery of car seats, social media live events and virtual webinars. Many of the school districts reached out to the coalitions to ask for safety training information on water, bike and pedestrian, seat belts and teen safe driving along with medicine and chemical safety and the many other safety topics Safe Kids Florida covers.

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Safe Kids Florida Strategic Plan

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How Do We Fulfill Our Mission?

• We promote awareness and education among parents/caregivers, and other child injury prevention advocates.
• We support public policies and programs that reduce injuries among children and youth.
• We provide safety education to children and youth in the major risk areas of traffic safety, water safety, fire safety, poisoning (including medicines), falls prevention, and suffocation.

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Local Coalitions

Local coalitions provide leadership to their communities and work to reduce unintentional childhood injury and death. They identify and target the most common injury problems in their local areas. Then, by combining the resources of their diverse membership, they plan and put into operation strategies to address those problems by:

• Educating adults and children
• Creating safe environments
• Conducting research
• Advocating for effective laws

Safe Kids Florida Local Coalitions Map

Safe Kids Florida is responsible for:

• Providing technical assistance to the Safe Kids Florida local coalitions
• Establishing new coalitions with the goal of having every county in Florida be covered by Safe Kids
• Seeking resources to support the Safe Kids Florida local coalitions

Under Florida law, e-mail addresses are public records. If you do not want your e-mail address released in response to a public records request, do not send electronic mail to this entity. Instead, contact this program by phone or in writing.

For more information, please contact the local coalition in your area, email the Safe Kids Florida Coordinator or call 850-245-4455.

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Safe Kids Worldwide

Safe Kids Worldwide is a global non-profit organization working to help families and communities keep kids safe from injuries, the number one killer of kids in the United States. Around the world, a child dies from an unintentional injury every 30 seconds. Every year, preventable injuries kill almost 1 million children around the world, and almost all of these tragedies are preventable.

Safe Kids Worldwide works with an extensive network of more than 400 coalitions in the United States and partners in more than 30 countries around the world to reduce childhood injuries from motor vehicles, sports, drownings, falls, burns, poisonings, unsafe sleep, gun safety and more. Please visit Safe Kids Worldwide for these and other resources.

Safe Kids Worldwide supports research, development, and implementation of various injury prevention programs to increase awareness of childhood injury and prevent injuries from happening.

Did You Know?
Child passenger safety technicians (CPSTs) must complete a rigorous training following national standards to be certified. Safe Kids Worldwide is responsible for developing the standards and certifying CPSTs.

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Safety Observances and Events

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Trends in Unintentional Injury-Related Deaths in Children

Since 1988, when Safe Kids was founded by Dr. Marty Eichelberger of the Children’s National Medical Center with support from founding sponsor, Johnson & Johnson, there has been a 60 percent decrease in the unintentional injury rate among children 19 years and younger.

Florida Childhood Injury Facts

• Unintentional injury is the leading cause of death among Florida’s children ages 19 and under
• During 2013, approximately 500,000 children were treated for injuries in Florida hospital emergency departments (500,705)
• Total emergency department charges in 2013, to treat Florida’s injured children ages 19 and under was over $900 million ($998,618,500)
• Approximately 8,740 of Florida’s children were taken to a hospital because of injuries in 2013 (8,404)
• Total hospital inpatient charges in 2013 to treat Florida’s injured children ages 19 and under was over $330 million ($363,309,219)
• From 2017 to 2019, the rate of unintentional firearm deaths among children 0 to 19 years of age in Florida decreased from 0.2 per 100,000 population to 0.1 per 100,000 population

For additional data, please see the Florida Injury Surveillance Data System page.

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