Ottawa Public Health, the city agency that works to keep local residents out of hospitals, is gearing up its spring and summer campaigns to promote helmet use as bicycles, skateboards and rollerblades are hauled out from winter storage.
And OPH officials are putting a special emphasis this on urging youth to wear helmets whenever they roll along city streets.
For two Glebe Collegiate students, this spring also brings a chance to test out new wheels they won as prizes won through an OPH-sponsored safety-awareness competition on Facebook. Melissa Vong and Reagan Yu were recently presented with the winning bicycles in the “Like my Helmet” contest, in which local youth posted pictures of themselves online wearing helmets while rollerblading, cycling, skating or snowboarding.
Public health nurse trainee Caitlyn Scott co-ordinated the contest. She says the key to encouraging helmet use among youth is to make it cool and trendy, so using social media to get the message out was a natural next step.
“It’s the first time that we engaged youth through social media on helmet use and we really just wanted to raise the profile of the issue and get their attention” Scott says.
Nancy Langdon, a supervisor at Ottawa Public Health, is confident that using social media sites such as Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook will improve the promotion of helmet use across the city. She’s also excited but tight-lipped about an upcoming project that will also use social media and form a key part of OPH’s helmet-promotion strategy.
The agency is also working on partnership activities with the city’s parks and recreation department. The “Youth on the Move” program will be sending young workers to skateboard parks across the city to encourage helmet use. While there are bylaws that require young ice skaters and cyclists to wear helmets, there is no similar policy for skateboarders.
Langdon says that promoting helmet use among skateboarders presents a particular challenge, but hopes the “Youth on the Move” program will help with that.
This summer will also see Ottawa Pubic Health promoting CAN-BIKE, a program designed to teach cyclists about safety on the road. There are plans to make the program available at a reduced cost to cyclists in the community.
A secondary focus for OPH this spring will be stressing the importance of wearing helmets properly. Langdon says Ottawans need to make sure they use a helmet that is properly fitted and designed for their particular sport.
Bay Coun. Mark Taylor, chair of the community and protective services committee, says there has been a growing push on helmet safety in the past several years.
He says the majority of head injuries that that are sports related happen to youth.
“If you can get to human beings when they’re young and encourage a certain kind of behaviour, chances are they’ll carry that behaviour with them into adult hood,” says Taylor. “We’re kind of building a safer tomorrow by getting to the kids of today.”