Each year more than 60,000 young children – or roughly four school busloads of children per day – are treated in emergency departments after getting into medicine while their parents or caregivers were not looking. These unsupervised ingestions are preventable, and we can all play a role in educating parents about safe medicine storage.
As a member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s
PROTECT Initiative, the National Safety Council is working to reduce unsupervised ingestions by promoting safe medicine storage at home. The Up and Away Community Toolkit is a joint collaboration of the CDC and Consumer Healthcare Products (CHPA) Educational Foundation developed to remind parents and caregivers about safe medicine storage and providing them with information, resources, and tools needed to keep children safe.
NSC partnered with the Up and Away and Out of Sight campaign to provide you with materials to download and share with your employees and communities:
Specifically, we urge you help us spread the word about Up and Away and Out of Sight by:
- Including a blurb in your employee and community newsletters
- Encouraging your local businesses and healthcare providers to promote the program with their customers and patients
- Promoting the program via social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter
- Negotiating with your local newspaper for placement of the Up and Away and Out of Sight print PSA
Together, we can help promote safe medicine storage at home and prevent young children from getting into medicines.