Passive Vs. Active Prevention Strategy

Passive and active prevention strategies are types of injury prevention techniques. They differ in the amount of human action required to make the technique effective. Injury prevention programs often use passive and active strategies.

Passive

• Passive injury prevention involves techniques designed to prevent injury and do not require any human action to be effective. These are automatic features designed to increase safety. Examples include better highways, air bags and federally regulated fire-resistant baby clothing.

Active

• Active prevention requires individual intervention to function correctly. These efforts involve educating the public on the safest courses of action and involve changing people's behavior to increase their safety. Examples of active prevention techniques include seat belts, testing the bath water's temperature before bathing and establishing drunk driving checkpoints.

Usage

• In application, passive and active strategies are typically used jointly as part of a comprehensive prevention strategy plan against injury. Protecting children against injury, for example, includes the passive strategy of child-resistant medication bottles and the active techniques of parents removing poisonous materials from the child's reach.

Effectiveness

• A study conducted by Columbus Children's Hospital's Center for Injury Research and Policy concluded that passive prevention techniques employed in baby walkers decreased the amount of injury by 76 percent between 1990 and 2001. While passive techniques may be more effective in some situations, they are not always possible to implement. An inability to come up with a passive technique, societal norms and a lack of resources may prohibit reliance on passive techniques.