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Shepherd Injury Prevention Program
Launches Online Effort to Reach
More Teens and Young Adults
By Pete Collman, Shepherd Center Community Relations Coordinator
and Think First Director of Georgia
It is said that an ounce of prevention
is worth a pound of cure. This
proverb describes the foundation on
which Shepherd Center’s Think First
and injury prevention programs are
built. For nearly 20 years, Shepherd
Center’s injury prevention message
has been delivered by speakers living
with disabilities, explaining their
unique stories of injury and teaching
youth on how to avoid brain and
Pete Collman
spinal cord trauma.
Having managed the Think First Program at Shepherd for
Photo by Leita Cowart
the past 10 years, I have found that teens and young adults
don’t easily seek out information on injury prevention. The
challenge lies in getting the message to them. That is why we
are creating a new, socially
dynamic outreach program
called YiPES!! (Youth and
Injury Prevention Education
at Shepherd).
Shepherd’s adolescent team
orthopedic physician, Herndon
Murray, M.D., proposed a
new approach to reach young
people on the perils of diving
and other risky behaviors related to water recreation. “I wanted
to see a specific focus on preventing diving and skim-boarding
injuries in the Southeast,” he says. “What Pete (Collman) and
his team have done has given this injury prevention message a
vehicle to reach even more young people than the 13,000 reached
through Shepherd Center’s current Think First Program.”
YiPES!! is designed to use social networking sites, such as
Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to get an “edgier” message out to
teens and young adults. This addition to the Think First Program
will help in the broadening of our audience through the World
Wide Web. Activities such as diving, skim boarding, skateboarding,
ATV riding and other extreme sports will be highlighted. Also, a
special emphasis will be placed upon distracted driving with a preventative
approach to educating drivers on the perils of texting and
phone usage while behind the wheel.
Video public service announcements (PSAs) will be created to
capture the attention of the adolescent Web surfer. Those will be
followed by a message from a current Shepherd Center patient explaining
their injury and how to avoid spinal cord and brain trauma.
“I feel this is a great effort to get behind and show support for
our injury prevention programs
here at Shepherd,” Dr.
Murray says. “I will be
presenting our efforts on
Think First and YiPES!! at
the International Spinal Cord
Society Convention this October
in Florence, Italy. I feel
this may just jump-start other
organizations to follow suit
in decreasing these catastrophic injuries among our young people.”
The YiPES!! Facebook page is active and is linked from the
Shepherd Center Facebook homepage at www.facebook.com/shepherd.
The YouTube and Twitter endeavors are under construction.
“I wanted to see a specific focus on preventing diving and
skim-boarding injuries in the Southeast. What Pete (Collman)
and his team have done has given this injury prevention
message a vehicle to reach even more young people than
the 13,000 reached through Shepherd Center’s current
Think First Program.” — Herndon Murray, M.D.
3 2 Spinal Column
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