Injuries continue to be the leading cause of death for adolescents and the USF College of Public Health’s work to address it is not going unnoticed.

The COPH is officially a Bronze winner in the 37^th Annual Telly Awards for the injury prevention video “Together we will change lives,” a first in the college’s history.

More than 13,000 entries from all 50 states and five continents were entered in this year’s awards ceremony.

The Telly Awards, founded in 1979, honors local, regional and cable TV programs for outstanding work in video production and online commercials, videos and films.

“We created a video focused on the leading causes and prevention strategies for child and adolescent injuries with one goal in mind—change behavior so that lives are saved and people can reach their full potential,” said Dr. Karen Liller, a child and adolescent injury professor in the Department of Community and Family Health, producer of the video.

More than 9,000 children and adolescents die each year from unintentional injuries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It remains the number one cause of death for this group, beating out cancer and other diseases.

Zachary Murray, COPH videographer and director of the video, joined the COPH in 2015 and said this was one of the first videos that he worked on upon being hired.

“The message of the video—changing lives through injury prevention, specifically in children—is obviously very important. We wanted it to be received by as many people as possible. So, the hope is that by winning this award, the video will be able to reach more people,” Murray said.

Winners represent the best work of the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators and corporate video departments in the world, according to the Telly Awards press release.

“It’s fantastic, I’m so happy that the video was made and that people are talking about it. We didn’t do the video for awards, we didn’t do the video for accolades, we really did it so that very simple injury prevention strategies could be shown in an interesting way so the messages could reach many people,” Liller said.

Liller has advocated for injury prevention among children for decades, including working for the passage of Florida’s bicycle helmet law. However, she notes that while the area of injury prevention has come a long way, there is still much work do to and that messaging techniques need to evolve.

Liller hopes to continue producing videos with Murray highlighting other leading causes of injury including burns, falls, poisoning and sports injuries.

“For injury prevention professionals, this is our future,” Liller said. “If we’re going to get the message out we can no longer count on programs, we can no longer count on face-to-face encounters and small groups. We’re really going to have to be present on social media and be able to compete with all the other messages that are out there.”

 

Story by Anna Mayor, USF College of Public Health