July 6 has been designated National Injury Prevention Day and a number of national and community resources are teaming up to recognize the initiative. 

Parachute is a national charity that works with local organizations around safety awareness and practices designed to prevent injuries. The organization provides resources and supports through a variety of channels. As part of the day, Parachute presented an online talk by New York Times bestselling author Dan Heath. In his book Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, Heath takes a look at the challenges to setting up preventative practices while focussing on the necessity for doing so. 

Part of the recognition will see city halls, municipal buildings, and other venues across the nation lit up in green, the colour of sponsoring organization Parachute. 

Safe Communities Humboldt echoes the sentiment about honouring the day. In a social media post, Safe Communities Humboldt notes that accidental injury costs the country $27 billion a year along with the untold suffering and loss that comes with such events. The post also cites that preventable injury kills more Canadian children than any disease, and more youth than all other causes combined. One child dies, on average, every day from a preventable injury.

“Dan Heath points out how difficult it is to show why prevention, or upstream interventions, are so important because, when it works, there is no heroic story of saving a life, only the absence of an incident occurring,” says Pamela Fuselli, Parachute’s President and CEO. “When prevention interventions aren’t implemented, there are those brave families who share their grief over lives cut short or drastically changed forever by injury. It’s the heartbreaking knowledge that these deaths were preventable that drives me personally, and Parachute as an organization.”

Humboldt City Hall will be lit up during the evening of July 6 to recognize National Injury Prevention Day.