Background: More than 200,000 children are injured at playgrounds in the United States each year. Our goal was to introduce a composite measure of playground safety and use this instrument to correlate the incidence of supracondylar humerus fractures with playground safety in an ecologic study design.
Methods: We used a novel "overall-safety rating," defined as a composite of 3 previously validated instruments (National Program for Playground Safety School score, surface depth compliance, and the use zone compliance) to measure the overall safety of all playgrounds within a region. The regions were rated from most to least safe based on average playground safety as measured by this new method. The incidence of supracondylar fractures was calculated using Hasbro Children's Hospital Emergency Department data and state of Rhode Island Census data from 1998 to 2006. The incidence was then correlated with playground safety as defined by our composite measure.
Results: Compared with the neighborhood deemed the safest, the least safe district had 4.7 times greater odds of supracondylar humerus fracture. Overall composite safety score of the district was linearly correlated with the injury rate observed in the population at risk (R=0.98; P=0.04).
Conclusions: Using our novel composite playground safety score, we found that the incidence of supracondylar humerus fractures was increased in districts with playgrounds with lower scores, suggesting that improvements in playground infrastructure may potentially reduce the incidence of supracondylar humerus fractures, and other injuries, in children.
Level of evidence: Level IV.