It seems like just yesterday that the kids flew out of school for summer holidays, the clanging of bells and squeaks of pencils quickly becoming but a distant memory. And yet, seemingly overnight, the evenings are getting cooler, the newspapers and TV are full of back-to-school ads, and the grocery stores are trumpeting easy solutions for school lunches.

It's that time again.

Every week this month, we will feature a different CIHR-funded health researcher. The link? They're all conducting research that ultimately affects school-aged children - what they eat, whether they're active enough, and how to protect them from injury. Check in every Monday to find out what's new.

• Week 1: Schools: Centres of learning, centres of activity
• Week 2: Back to school means back to lunches
• Week 3: Balance the key to protecting teenaged athletes from injury
• Week 4: Getting the goods on peanut allergies

Encouraging laughter, preventing tears in the playground

New playground equipment in 34 Toronto District School Board (TDSB) schools has given Dr. Andrew Howard an opportunity to test the effect of different surfacing materials on injury rates.

Playgrounds are places for fun, but the injuries that can result aren't a laughing matter.  Playground injuries account for about 10% of injury-related visits to the emergency department among children aged 5-9. 

In a study funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), Dr. Howard, from Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, will monitor injury rates in playgrounds with two different surfacing materials, wood chips and granite sand.  He will look, in particular, at arm and wrist fractures and head injuries.  His work will help to determine which surfaces create the safest playgrounds for children.

The study is part of Dr. Howard's commitment to making playgrounds places for smiles, not tears.  An earlier study, also conducted in Toronto school yards, found that removing unsafe equipment and replacing it with equipment that meets standards set by the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) is a good way to reduce playground injuries. 

He and his team compared injury rates between Toronto schools that had had unsafe equipment removed and replaced and those whose equipment did not need to be replaced.  Injury rates in the 86 schools with new, CSA-approved equipment decreased, with 550 injuries avoided in the period of Dr. Howard's study.  Meanwhile, injury rates in the schools with older equipment increased. 

CSA-approved playground equipment, together with the most effective surfacing material, will translate into safer schoolyards for our children.  And that's something to laugh about.