The importance of minor injury.

The public health approach to injury control is now widely accepted. Since the development of this approach, there has been a shift in the perspective of public health programs to include broader definitions of health. There have also been increasing efforts to evaluate public health interventions in terms of health outcomes at the population level. In this context, it might be appropriate to broaden the focus of injury prevention to target more specifically injuries that are not life-threatening. Although they are not responsible for major morbidity at an individual level, they probably account for the greatest decrement in the health of the population as a whole.