How Do We Measure College Safety?

How do we begin to measure college safety?

Is it the depth of a crack in a steep campus walkway?

Is it the distance from the top of a bunk bed with no bed rail to the hard floor below?

Is it how many miles the nearest Level l Trauma center is from campus?

Maybe it’s how many serious injuries or deaths occur annually on our college campuses. What if we don’t KNOW the answers because there is no data to GIVE us the answers?

Our world runs on data. If you ask anyone for funding on a project to make major changes, the first thing they will ask is WHY? If you don’t have charts, graphs, and numbers to back your claim then you probably won’t get funding and things probably aren’t going to change.

This is the current challenge we have in college safety. Incidents and accidents that cause serious injury or death are not counted or recorded in a way that renders useful data to make lasting change. If you can’t see that something is broken, how do you ever fix it? This conundrum is what brings us to consider what the COREY Safety Act will achieve when it becomes law. Once we locate the missing numbers (the “data desert” that currently exists in the 18-25 age group) then we can share those numbers with the injury prevention community, campus safety experts, and even parents & students who are making decisions on where to spend their higher education dollars.

According to the American College Health Association (ACHA) a college student is 20 times more likely to die from an injury than from a crime or fire*, yet currently we only capture data on crimes and fires. Simply put, we are not getting the full picture. With that much data missing, how can we ever act in a meaningful way to protect college students? We can’t possibly make campus improvements if we don’t have the data to show they are necessary and potentially lifesaving.

The COREY Safety Act, currently before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives is a common sense bill that will provide for the collection of uniform national statistics on serious bodily injuries and deaths resulting from unintentional injuries on campus. It’s time to act. We have the power to change this and YOU have the power to initiate that change. Click the link to send an email to your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative asking them to prioritize college safety by voting YES on the COREY Safety Act! The whole process takes less than two minutes and costs nothing!

Let’s make real change to prevent injury and save lives. I can’t think of a better investment in the future of this country than to protect our most valuable asset…our kids.

Click HERE to Email Your U.S. Senator/Representative

*Turner JC, Leno EV, Keller A. Causes of Mortality Among American College Students: A Pilot Study. J College Stud Psychotherapy. 2013 Jan 1;27(1):31-42.