To Your Health – Buckle Up Your Children
 
– By Joan Carlin-Halpern MS, RNC, NNP –

Did you know that car crashes are the No. 1 killer of young children? Did you also know that nearly half of the deaths and injuries occurred because the children were not properly restrained? These facts tell the grim story: according to the Centers for Disease Control, car crashes last year claimed 2,542 lives of children ages 15 and younger and injured another 294,000.  Of these, nearly half were the result of the children not being properly restrained.
One of the weakest links in this carnage — and one that parents have the power to change — is making sure children’s car seats are properly installed. Doing so helps assure that your child will be properly restrained in the event of a crash. The extent of this problem is reflected in another alarming statistic, this time from the Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which estimates eight out of ten children’s seats are improperly installed.
Making sure your children are safe in their car seats is the mission of White Plains Hospital’s unique Child Passenger Safety Program, now in its fifth year—an ongoing education initiative done in collaboration between the Hospital, Westchester Safe Kids Coalition, and the Greenburgh Police Department— designed to give parents the guidance they need to create greater safety for themselves and their loved ones by providing free educational seminars and safety checks. It’s the only one being offered by a community hospital in Westchester and a resource you should take advantage of to bring peace of mind to you and your loved ones.
Here’s how it works. On the first Tuesday of every month, the Hospital and the Town of Greenburgh Police conduct a free seminar, open to parents from any community, to demonstrate how parents can protect their newborns and other children in the car as well as provide information about how to correctly select, use and install the child restraints. The importance of having the right seat for the child based on his or her weight and height is one of the key messages learned at this session as well as these guidelines for transporting infants:
• Must be used in a rear-facing position until child is at least 12 months old and weighs at least 20 pounds (rear-facing infant seats reduce the risk of fatal injury in a car crash by 71 percent).
• Your child’s head should be at least one inch below the top of the child seat.
• Never place this type of seat in front of an airbag. The preferred location is in the back seat in the middle of the car.
• Never hold your baby in your lap when the vehicle is in motion.
The free seminar also provides guidance on toddler and booster seats. To reserve a seat at a session, call 681-2444 or e-mail Jill Guercio, RN, at  jguercio@wphospital.org. Sessions are held at Greenburgh Town Hall, 177 Hillside Avenue.
You don’t need to make an appointment to have your child’s safety seat checked by a trained technician at the Safety Inspection Station. You can have this done on the first and third Saturday of every month between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., also at Greenburgh Town Hall.  Last year, only 10 out of 1,431 child safety seats that were inspected by our team were found to be installed properly. Please make this your next priority.
The author is director of Nursing, Maternal-Child Services, White Plains Hospital Center.