SALT LAKE CITY — When Leslie Bruce and her family met up with her sister-in-law to carpool to Logan for a family event in 2004, the drive could’ve turned tragic when a car struck them from behind, causing them to hit the concrete median and roll across the freeway.
But the family members, including Bruce’s 18-month-old son Zyon, were all able to walk away from the crash without serious injuries. The mother said that was in part due to Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital’s Hold On to Dear Life program, which among other things, teaches parents how to install car seats.
“Zyon had the least amount of injuries, of just two bruises where his chest clip was at,” she said.
“If Zyon’s car seat had not been installed correctly, there is no way of knowing how our lives could’ve been changed that day. Being armed with the knowledge to correctly install a car seat potentially saved my son’s life and altered the course of mine,” Bruce said.
Bruce had attended a “car seat checkpoint” just a few weeks earlier. The experience prompted her to eventually become a car seat safety technician at Primary Children’s Hospital.
That was one success story shared Tuesday as officials from Primary Children’s Hospital celebrated the 30th anniversary of the hospital’s Hold On To Dear Life children’s safety campaign and announced a new initiative to promote adolescent mental health.
The campaign began in 1990 with donations from the Huntsman Family Foundation and originally focused on children’s car safety and advocated for car seat and seat belt use. It expanded to promote pedestrian, off-road vehicle and water safety. The campaign also urged parents not to leave children alone in cars, and encouraged everyone to walk around their vehicles before backing out of a driveway or parking lot to avoid hitting a child.
“Over the past 30 years together with you, our community partners, we’ve seen Utah’s childhood injury death drop from 19.2 to 15 per 100,000, and every one of those is a reason to celebrate,” said Jessica Strong, community health manager at the hospital.
But injury is still the leading cause of death for children, according to hospital administrator Dustin Lipson, and continued work is needed.
With that thought, Primary Children’s has launched talktotweens.com to provide parents resources to talk to their children between the ages of 11-15 about emotional health, as data shows Utah kids are increasingly struggling as they transition into their teenage years.
“As adults, we know that these middle school years can be tough ones. Kids are experiencing many changes, physical, social and emotional. And sometimes, parents are a little bit at a loss about how to best help their kids navigate these changes,” she said.
“We should recognize that we can teach children skills to build emotional well-being. Emotional well-being is an active process of encouraging, teaching and practicing those tools, and many of us can benefit from some tools to help our children with that,” Strong said.
As a parent, it’s important for parents to understand that their children are more likely to seek help from them than a parent realizes, said Tammer Attallah, pediatric behavioral health community services director for Primary Children’s Hospital.
Though talking about emotional health might be uncomfortable for some, he said, starting small can make a “significant difference in you and your tween’s life.”
The resources on Talktotweens.com are available in both Spanish and English.