Welcome to ECIC News! Please see our highlights from the last Quarterly Meeting and specific core updates below. Don't forget to come to the next Brown Bag Lecture - a panel presentation on Injury Legislation - May 20th!

• ECIC Updates: Our new promotional items are in and ECIC says thank you to our consortium of community practitioners, students, and researchers. Everyone at the meeting received some of our new promotional items. We have ECIC pens, tumblers, green ribbons for victims of gun violence, first aid kits, and more. Center Director, Deb Houry, shared ECIC updates with meeting attendees.

• Kimberly Stringer - DPH: Ms. Stringer is the Deputy Director of Government Relations at the GA Department of Public Health. She provided an overview of legislative updates for injury-related bills that were involved in this past legislative session, as well as information regarding bills to look out for in the next session. For a review of the bills that were included in this last session, check out the policy section on our website.

Education & Training

• Brown Bag Lecture Series: Our Brown Bag lecture series concludes with a panel presentation on May 20th from 12 - 1pm focused on injury policy. The 4 panelists come from: CDC's National Injury Center, the Georgia Department of Public Health, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, and the Brain & Spinal Injury Trust Fund Commission. Each panelist will discuss their work in the policy world and key injury-related legislation that either passed or did not during this past legislative session. Be sure to RSVP for pizza and soda! For more information and to listen to recordings visit our website.

• Social Media Lecture Series: On April 29th we heard from Carolyn Bregman and Stacey Gall from Emory's Alumni Association.  We learned all about expanding communities by creating and managing LinkedIn group pages - don't forget to join ECIC's LinkedIn Group! Our last lecture of the series focuses on Twitter. Join us June 14th from 12-1pm for Twitter Tactics presented by Tressie McMillan Cottom. Learn all about "microblogging", who to follow and how to be followed, the rules of engagement, and learn new strategies for tweeting your brand! If you don't already, follow us @EmoryCIC.  

• Faculty Mentorship Program: The 7-month Mentorship Program has come to a close. On May 7th, the ECIC celebrated the accomplishments of the 6 fantastic mentor/mentee pairs. Hear about their experiences in this program at our September Quarterly Meeting. If you are interested in signing up for the next cohort, as a mentee or mentor, visit our website. 

• Summer Student Scholarship Program: ECIC's Summer Student Scholarship Program begins again this June. We received applications from PhD and MPH students from 4 universities with projects relating to: Sexual Assault, Traumatic Brain Injury, Child Maltreatment, and Bicycle Safety. You will hear all about the recipients' hard work at our next meeting! 

Research
ADVANCE

• WestJEM: We are excited for the 4th ECIC special issue to come out this summer! Grab your copy at the next ECIC Quarterly Meeting. Mark down the submission deadline for our 5th issue: Dec. 16th 2013. This next issue will focus on Social Media Uses for Injury Prevention. Links to past ECIC issues can be found on our website.   

• Safe States/SAVIR Conference: The Safe States Alliance and the Society for Advancement of Injury Research (SAVIR) will host their 2013 National Meeting June 5 - 7th in Baltimore, MD with Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. ECIC will be presenting: Strategies for Promoting Injury Prevention Messages Using Social and Major Media Outlets. 

• ASC Conference: We are excited that this year's American Society of Criminology conference will be held right here in Atlanta, November 20 - 23, 2013. ECIC will be presenting: Innovative Partnerships and Strategies to Reduce Violence in Georgia. This is a fantastic conference, so we really encourage the ECIC community to get involved this year! Visit the ASC website for more information.

ECIC Associate Director of Research 

Community Outreach
PRACTICE

• Occupant Safety Caravan: The Governor's Office of Highway Safety, GA Department of Public Health's SE GA Rural Roads Initiative, and local Safe Kids organization coordinated law enforcement, highway safety educators, and local volunteers to conduct the April Toombs County Occupant Safety Caravan (TCOSC). During the 3-day event, educational presentations were made at local schools, law enforcement conducted two road checks with safety seat technicians, and a child safety seat check was held. As a result of the program, seat belt usage at the high school went from an average of 50% to 84% while in the community seat belt usage went from 43% to 54%. To help provide long term change, in Toombs County there are now 9 additional certified Child Passenger Safety Technicians available to inspect car seats and provide education to families, 15 nurses trained in child occupant safety, and 6 day care centers who have been trained on safe transportation. Additionally, 131 children were provided child safety seats and their care givers received training on their use.     

• Great Resource: GA Office of Health Indicators for Planning has developed a new resource: a compilation of community health needs assessments, or dashboards. This tool ranks causes and state/county comparison rates for deaths, hospital discharges, and ED visits. Users can search on individual counties and get additional data specific to that county. Check out the new dashboards on the oasis website: http://oasis.state.ga.us/oasis/ under dashboards link.

• Public Health Connect: This tool was developed to support geographically dispersed professionals working in the field of public health. phConnect provides an environment for collaborative work, professional networking, and moving public health forward. www.phconnect.org

• Kids in Hot Cars Event: Friday, May 10th the GA DPH Injury Program, DECAL, GOHS, Safe Kids, and ECIC held an event at the capital to raise awareness about the dangers of leaving children in hot cars.  

• Injury Bills: Georgia's 2013 Legislative Session ended in April. Please see injury-related bills below that passed. More information on each bill can be found here: http://www.legis.ga.gov/en-US/default.aspx. Enter the HB or SB number in the search engine box located on the left of screen.

  • • HB 78 - Crimes and offenses; protection of disabled adults and elder persons                
    • HB 242 - Juvenile proceedings; substantially revise, supersede, and modernize
    • HB 284 - Return To Play Act of 2013
    • SB 14 - Georgia Alzheimer's and Related Dementias State Plan Task Force
    • SB 86 - Family Violence; provide greater protection
    • SB 136 - "Kyle Glover Boat Education Law" and "Jake and Griffin BUI Law"
    

Ms. Lisa Dawson
ECIC Associate Director of Community Outreach

Policy
CHANGE

• Georgia's Legislative Session: Please see above for the injury-related bills that passed this session or view them here. 

• Public Health TV Show: ECIC will be featured in the University of Georgia's Public Health Impact TV Show! This 30 minute program takes an in-depth look at critical public health issues and features analysis and information from leading researchers. Stay tuned for a link to watch the episode (posted on our website). 

 

Sincerely,