On Friday, January 22, physicians, hospital administrators, transportation and traffic safety experts and community activists gathered at Elmhurst Hospital Center (EHC) for the second annual New York City Summit on Pedestrian Injury. The one-day symposium, part of a public education and outreach campaign developed by Elmhurst Hospital Center's Trauma and Neurosurgery Departments, examined pedestrian injuries and their impact on public health.

"Neighborhoods in Western and Central Queens, (the catchment area for Elmhurst Hospital Center), have seen an increasing rise in the number of traffic accidents involving pedestrians," Dr. Jaime Ullman, Elmhurst Hospital Center's Director of Neurosurgery and one of the chief organizers of the summit, said. "According to a recent study we conducted, traffic accidents involving pedestrians, especially those taking place on Queens Boulevard, Northern Boulevard, and Roosevelt Avenue, resulted in more than 30 percent of the injuries seen in Elmhurst Hospital Center's Emergency Room."

Ullman noted that the statistic is frighteningly high. "Pedestrian injuries typically make up nine percent to 25 percent of injuries seen at hospitals in other parts of the city," she said.

By analyzing EHC's admissions data, Ullman and her investigative team also discovered that pedestrian injuries were one of the leading causes of individuals having actually to be hospitalized, sometimes for long periods, due to suffering serious neurological damage.

Other summit participants included representatives from the New York state and New York City Departments of Transportation, the New York City Police Department, Emergency Medical Services, New York University School of Medicine, New York Hospital of Queens and Staten Island University Hospital, who discussed the challenges faced by municipal governments, healthcare institutions, and community-based organizations seeking to raise public awareness regarding pedestrian injuries. Marjorie Marciano of the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) talked about how the department had begun tackling those challenges through an education campaign being implemented at a number of schools throughout the five boroughs. Shin-pei Tsay of Transportation Alternatives, a grass roots nonprofit that advocates for the increased use of bicycles and pedestrian walkways, presented information about the innovative solutions being used in other cities around the world to decrease congestion on roadways and create more pedestrian-friendly urban areas.

When asked what additional steps she thought should be taken to help reduce the number of pedestrian injury victims, Ullman replied: "We really need to make an aggressive, multilingual outreach effort to educate the public about these injuries. In a way, I'd like to be put out of business, because we are seeing way too many patients with serious blunt trauma injuries that were entirely preventable."

For more information about Elmhurst Hospital Center's Pedestrian Injury Prevention Campaign, contact Assistant Director of External Affairs Atiya Butler at 718.334.1259 or e-mail atiya.butler@nychhc.org.

Elmhurst Hospital Center (EHC) is the major tertiary care provider in the borough of Queens. The 545-bed hospital is a Level I Trauma Center, an Emergency Heart Care Station and a 911 Receiving Hospital. It is the premiere health care organization for key areas such as surgery, cardiology, women's health, pediatrics, rehabilitation medicine, renal and mental health services.