Abstract
This paper aimed to articulate the process of development of the model of “Safe Community,” an approach to community safety promotion through injury prevention at the community level. The author offered an analysis from various perspectives of the features and tendencies of the communities designated as members of the International Safe Community Network. In the 1980's, success in injury prevention at the level of a Swedish community started to stimulate injury prevention programs as a solution to health problems in Nordic communities. The successful results observed in those Nordic communities also drew attention from the World Health Organization (WHO), which ranked injuries among the primary factors affecting health at the time. The WHO regarded the prevention of injuries as a potent solution to promote people's health. Therefore, the WHO and the Karolinska Institutet, which houses a group of researchers specializing in injury prevention, set up a collaborating center to promote community safety worldwide through injury prevention. The center, named “the Collaborating Center on Community Safety Promotion,” has developed a framework of safety promotion programs for action at the community level. The framework consists of 6 criteria leading communities in different situations to establish systems of safety promotion with existing social resources. Because the framework can be carried out in diverse settings, an increasing number of communities have been adopting “Safe Community” initiatives for community development through various approaches as well as safety promotion adapted to their own specific contexts.
