CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY

Injury data are essential for making informed decisions about a country’s priorities and in developing effective policies and actions (Eurosafe, 2013). Population surveys, despite problems with recall and selection bias, remain the only source of information for injury prevalence calculation in many countries (Bejko et al., 2018). One of them is The Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, WHO’s collaborative cross-national survey, which collects data every four years on 11-, 13- and 15-year-old boys’ and girls’ health and well-being, social environments and health behaviours. Findings from the latest survey show that 44 % of 11-years old, 45 % of 13-years old and 42 % of 15-years old adolescents reported having a medically attended injury at least once in the last 12 months with significant cross-national differences (WHO, 2016). Despite the fact that HBSC study allows to obtain data on circumstances of the injury event (place and activity) as well, not all countries are using this optional package of questions, therefore there is need for such a data collection in many countries. They can complement other data sources such The EU Injury Data Base (IDB), which is collecting data on severe injuries from Emergency departments of selected hospitals, and European Health Inventory Survey (EHIS) collecting injury data from respondents older than 15 years. One of the examples of such complementing data comes from Finnish National Physical Activity Behaviour Study for Children and Adolescents (LIITU) study under the HBSC study where the injury prevalence in adolescents was found in general high (47 % of the subjects had suffered at least one PARI during the past 12 months), with higher prevalence in sports club activities than in leisure time PA and school-based PA (Räisänen et al., 2018). Because some countries are not providing data to IDB (e.g. Slovakia and Poland), and EHIS is not providing data for persons younger than 15 years old, the HBSC study can serve as the valuable cross-sectional PARI prevalence data source in younger adolescents.

The next HBSC data collection is planned in 2022. The PARI prevalence data will be collected in 5 countries: Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Finland and Czechia.