Safety 2022: the record
Safety 2022 — the 14th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion — was held in Adelaide from 27 to 30 November 2022, hosted by the Public Health Association of Australia and co-sponsored by the World Health Organization. Around 1,500 delegates attended in person and online.
What this record is
The conference’s website was taken down after the event, and the hundreds of links to it from health departments, research groups and road-safety bodies stopped resolving. These pages summarise what it published, with a link to the Internet Archive’s capture of each original page so anyone can check the record against it.
The conference papers and the abstract book are the Public Health Association of Australia’s to publish, not ours. We do not host them here; the archive links to the captures instead. Read the disclaimer.
In the archive
About the conference
The record of Safety 2022, the 14th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion, held at the Adelaide Convention Centre from Sunday 27 to Wednesday 30 November 2022 as a hybrid event. The Public Health Association of Australia hosted it, the World Health Organization co-sponsored it, and the theme was 'Reconnecting, Reinvigorating, Reimagining Injury Prevention'.
The conference
Safety 2022 was the 14th in the series of World Conferences on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion. It ran from Sunday 27 to Wednesday 30 November 2022 at the Adelaide Convention Centre in Adelaide, South Australia, and was the first in the series to be run in hybrid form, with delegates attending either in the venue or through an online portal.
The Public Health Association of Australia was the local host. The World Health Organization was the co-sponsor and, with its network of Collaborating Centres for Violence and Injury Prevention, is the originator of the conference series. The Australasian Injury Prevention Network and the Australasian University Safety Association were supporting hosts. The site described the series as gathering some 1,500 of the world's leading experts to exchange knowledge and experience on injuries and violence.
The site's own description of the event read: '14th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion, Adelaide 27 to 30 November 2022. Co-sponsored by the World Health Organization, hear from 1,500 of the world's leading experts to exchange the latest knowledge and experience in understanding and addressing injuries and violence.'
- Full name: the 14th World Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion
- Short name and hashtag: Safety 2022, #SAFETY2022
- Dates: Sunday 27 to Wednesday 30 November 2022
- Venue: Adelaide Convention Centre, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Format: hybrid — in person and online
- Local host: Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA)
- Co-sponsor: World Health Organization (WHO)
- Supporting hosts: Australasian Injury Prevention Network (AIPN); Australasian University Safety Association (AUSA)
- Principal partners: Adelaide Convention Bureau, South Australian Government, Adelaide Convention Centre
- Convenor: Professor Richard Franklin
- Chair of the International Organising Committee: Dr Etienne Krug
Theme: Reconnecting, Reinvigorating, Reimagining Injury Prevention
The conference theme was 'Reconnecting, Reinvigorating, Reimagining Injury Prevention'. The organisers explained that they chose it in light of large changes happening across the world — the COVID-19 pandemic above all, but also renewable energy, automation in vehicles and manufacturing, big data and artificial intelligence, the Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, climate change, higher government debt and ageing populations. Their argument was that these shifts would change how injury prevention work is done and would require the field to rethink its priorities, reach and delivery.
Conference objectives
The site set out eight objectives for Safety 2022, framed around injury prevention and safety promotion as a maturing field that spans many disciplines, interest groups and settings.
- Facilitate international information sharing and cooperation, and further develop the science of injury prevention and safety promotion
- Provide evidence on good practices by which national progress in planning and developing injury prevention initiatives can be measured
- Provide greater accessibility and ensure delegate safety by offering both face-to-face and virtual attendance in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
- Create an environment for knowledge sharing, collaboration and relationship building — a 'global injury prevention and safety promotion community'
- Encourage young researchers and health promotion practitioners to begin a career in injury prevention
- Recognise and encourage inter-sectoral liaison and collaboration, including encouraging and embracing diversity and anti-racism learnings
- Develop the knowledge base of injury prevention practice
- Connect a growing number of professionals and stakeholders to WHO policies for violence and injury prevention
Who it was for
The conference set out to hold global, inclusive and diverse conversations about the gaps in injury prevention and safety promotion. The audience the organisers named was broad and practitioner-heavy rather than purely academic.
- Policy makers and government officials
- Researchers and academics
- Community and NGO workers
- Practitioners and health professionals
- Funders of prevention programs
- Safety officers and local council workers
- Workplace health and safety representatives
- Drug and alcohol workers
Topics and streams
Four concurrent session blocks ran across the three main days, each with seven parallel streams, alongside eight State of the Art sessions on single subjects. Road safety ran in every concurrent block. The stream titles as they appeared in the program were:
- Road safety
- Drowning prevention (supported by Royal Life Saving Australia)
- Child safety and child transport safety
- Violence prevention
- Trauma care
- Injury and the COVID-19 pandemic
- First Nations injury prevention
- Disasters and injury prevention
- Programs and policies
- Suicide and self-harm prevention
- Work safety
- Safe communities
- New and innovative approaches (supported by AIPN)
- Alcohol and other drugs
- Home safety
- Falls prevention
- Sustainable Development Goals
- Burn injury and poisoning prevention
- Built environments and injury prevention / sports safety
- State of the Art subjects: work health and safety, falls, sport, road safety, violence, trauma, drowning, children
Postponed from 2020
The conference was first scheduled for Sunday 8 to Wednesday 11 November 2020 in Adelaide and was known as Safety 2020. In May 2020 the Public Health Association of Australia, the International Organizing Committee of the World Conferences and the World Health Organization announced that it would be postponed to 27–30 November 2022 because of COVID-19.
To hold the community together across the two-year gap, the organisers ran a Virtual Pre-Conference Global Injury Prevention Showcase over five days from Monday 22 to Friday 26 March 2021, with presenters from more than 50 countries.
Supporters
Supporters were listed by tier on the site. The World Health Organization was co-sponsor and a scholarship supporter for delegates from low- and middle-income countries; AIPN and AUSA were supporting hosts; the Australian Government Department of Health was an associate supporter; James Cook University was an affiliation supporter; Bloomberg Philanthropies hosted the welcome reception; BMJ was a supporter and publisher of the official journal, Injury Prevention; Royal Life Saving Society – Australia and the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care were stream supporters.
The exhibition included Monash University Accident Research Centre, the Center for Safe Alaskans, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health International Injury Research Unit, the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP), the Transport Accident Commission, the Australian Institute of Health and Safety, the Centre for Work Health and Safety, the National Centre for Farmer Health, the Global Health Advocacy Incubator, the UNSW School of Population Health and the organisers of the 23rd World Congress on Safety and Health at Work.
People named on the page
- Professor Richard Franklin — Conference Convenor — Injury Prevention Special Interest Group Co-Convenor, Public Health Association of Australia; Professor for Public Health - Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion, James Cook University
- Dr Etienne Krug — Chair of the International Organizing Committee for the World Conferences on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion — Director, Department for Social Determinants of Health, World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland
- Adjunct Professor Terry Slevin — National Organising Committee member; Opening Plenary co-chair — CEO, Public Health Association of Australia
- Associate Professor Janneke Berecki-Gisolf — Chair, Scientific Advisory Committee — Director of the Victorian Injury Surveillance Unit, Monash University Accident Research Centre