Injuries are a persistent and dynamic public health problem caused by a variety of widely different events. The field is characterised by the continuous introduction of new hazards to societies and by the exposure of new generations, time and again, to longer existing risks. This calls for accurate public health surveillance systems to be used as a basis for research and policy. This thesis explores long-term developments in the burden of injuries and its underlying factors in The Netherlands. It mainly focuses on unintentional injuries as caused by three major types of accidents: traffic accidents, occupational accidents and home and leisure accidents. It presents a number of quantitative analyses that were performed within the framework of a public health surveillance system initiated in 1985. (A)
Abstract