Program Overview

Program Overview

The Skills for Preventing Injury in Youth (SPIY) program is a high-school program designed to reduce injury by encouraging peers to look out for one another and prevent risk-taking. The program is complemented by developing peer helping and first aid skills, as well as school connectedness.

Program Details

• The program aims to promote safety among adolescents by utilizing the peer-relationship as a mechanism for prevention.
• The program encourages peers to look out for one another and prevent risk-taking.
• The program develops peer helping and first aid skills, as well as school connectedness.

Implementation Evaluation

• The implementation evaluation of the SPIY program involved 152 students and 12 teachers who delivered the program.
• Participants reported on students' understanding of peer protective behaviour and the program implementation, including adherence, dose, quality of program delivery, and participant responsiveness.
• Students reported on many approaches to protecting friends, and both students and teachers found the program interesting, interactive, and able to be delivered.

Research Areas

• The program focuses on reducing adolescent risk-taking and injury.
• The program explores the use of peer-relationships as a mechanism for prevention.
• Key areas of research include:
  • Bystander helping
  • High school interventions
  • Intervening and peer protection
  • Protective behaviour
  • School connectedness

Funding Information

• The research was funded by the Australian Research Council-Discovery Projects (ARC-DP), grant number DP.
• The research was also supported (partially) by the Motor Accident Insurance Commission (MAIC) Queensland.
• The views expressed are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the MAIC.

Publication Details

• The program evaluation was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
• The publication is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.
• The DOI for the publication is 10.3390/ijerph.