IPNANZ Conference “Weaving the Strands”

29-31 October 2007

Around 120 Injury Prevention practitioners, researchers and influencers gathered in Napier for the 3 day IPNANZ conference- the first one out of Wellington! The attendees enjoyed the warm, Hawkes Bay weather whilst gaining sector-wide knowledge establishing and maintaining networks.

The key note speakers were of high quality with challenging presentations on social engineering and innovation, the modern media environment and whanau violence prevention. Conference workshops and presentations covered a wide range of issues from injury prevention research and strategy through to community initiatives, largely fronted by the community and NGO agencies, but most with support from the public sector.

Approximately 25 people learnt about the findings of the recent population based safety culture survey during a workshop led by the NZIPS Secretariat (Dee Young) Participants provided feedback on ways to influence perceptions and resulting behaviours, including the use of storytelling to get across the real impact of home injuries, creativity to rethink how we get the message across, different media to fit community profiles, message consistency and that a positive approach was essential. This workshop was followed up by an interview with Dee Young on National Radio's Morning Report which focussed on the research findings and the importance of finding the balance between enjoying life and taking precautions to prevent injuries, especially in home environments.

You can view the outcomes of Dees workshop here.

A presentation was also provided by Fleur Mulligan and Gay Richards titled "Woven evidence. A kete of databases for injury prevention in Aotearoa New Zealand". The presentation gave an overview of the benefits of using online databases and also demonstrated the ease of use through a mock search. Questions arose as to whether the three databases could be combined, however it was agreed that the databases offer different types of data and have different funding streams making amalgamation problematic. Attendees were positive that data on expired programmes would still be accessible. This presentation will assist in extending the reach of the databases, both in the number of entries they contain and also the number of people using them.

You can view the database presentation here. (PDF 800Kb)

Further information and photos from the conference. (IPN website)