982 - An Uncertain Outlook for Injury Prevention in the U.S.
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2025
⏱️ 17 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About this episode:
Injury prevention—a field focused on preventing injuries from falls, choking, homicides, car crashes, and other incidents—saves lives and money. Now, the United States' leading injury prevention unit, the CDC Injury Center, is grappling with cuts to funding and personnel that debilitate critical work. In this episode: Natalie Draisin, an injury prevention expert, details the lifesaving work at risk in extended funding battles.
Guests:
Natalie Draisin, MPH, MBA, is the director of the North America Office and United Nations representative for the FIA Foundation, an organization promoting road safety. She also serves as an advisor on road safety to WHO and the International Transport Forum.
Host:
Stephanie Desmon, MA, is a former journalist, author, and the director of public relations and communications for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs.
Show links and related content:
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Injury prevention is in danger from federal cuts—Baltimore Sun
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With CDC injury prevention team gutted, 'we will not know what is killing us'—NPR
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Dr. Debra Houry on Her Decision to Leave the CDC—Public Health On Call (September 2025)
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Women's History Month: A Conversation With Sue Baker, the "Mother of Injury Prevention"—Public Health On Call (March 2024)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:31.5 | It's on Zy Smith Rogers. |
| 0:33.2 | Today, a look at the CDC's Injury Center, which for more than 30 years has studied the science of injury prevention and made recommendations on everything from speed limits to car seats to swim lessons to keep people safe. |
| 0:46.5 | With federal funding cuts and the center's budget on the line, injury prevention expert Natalie Drazen talks to Stephanie Desmond about why the center is crucial to |
| 0:55.2 | strides made in saving lives. Let's listen. Natalie Drazen, thanks so much for joining me. |
| 1:01.1 | Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to join you. You work in injury prevention, |
| 1:06.2 | and I wanted today to talk to you about the future of injury prevention. And I guess maybe the best |
| 1:13.3 | place to start is the history of injury prevention. Absolutely. So the history of injury |
| 1:20.3 | prevention is an interesting one. Injury prevention was really seen before as something about |
| 1:27.0 | accidents, accidents that were acts of God, |
| 1:30.3 | they were not preventable. And then there were a couple pioneers that really changed that. And they |
| 1:35.4 | saw them as preventable. And that was revolutionary. So specifically, I'm going to tell you about |
| 1:40.7 | the CDC Injury Center because it's at risk and we have a chance |
| 1:46.0 | to save it. We have to save it quite literally to save ourselves. It focuses on the leading killer |
| 1:53.3 | of people ages 1 to 44 and that's unintentional injuries. And what I'm talking about here is |
| 1:59.4 | car crashes and falls and violence and suicide and overdoses |
| 2:03.4 | and poisonings. Everything we think is never going to happen to us, but sometimes it's too late. |
| 2:09.5 | And the cost is outrageous. It's $4.9 trillion annually, and that's over 17% of our GDP. So there were a few people who, |
| 2:20.7 | again, thought that these were preventable things, and those were our pioneers. They came together |
... |
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