339 Evaluation of a distribution, education, and awareness intervention for child passenger safety in a low- and middle-income country setting: a pre-post study

<h3>Background</h3> The Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) suffers disproportionately from pediatric traffic-related injuries and deaths. Despite governmental laws, Lebanon – an EMR country – has low child restraint (CR) use prevalence. <h3>Objective</h3> This study examined the impact of utilizing car seat Distribution and child passenger safety (CPS), Educational and Awareness (DEA) intervention to improve CPS knowledge and practices among caregivers in Lebanon. <h3>Methods</h3> This pre-post study recruited Lebanese caregivers meeting the criteria of having one child or more, using a 4-wheel motor vehicle, and not using a car seat. The intervention comprised an educational session followed by a car seat or booster seat distribution and installation check by a certified CPS technician (CPST). A baseline assessment questionnaire identified the reasons for the lack of prior CR use. A CPS knowledge test was administered before, immediately after, and three months post-intervention to assess CPS knowledge retention and compare it to the baseline using the conditional logit model for pre-post interventions. <h3>Results</h3> Fifty-eight participants underwent the adopted intervention. Financial constraints were identified as the primary reason for not using a car seat. Three months after the intervention, compliance with the use of CRs was reported at 100%, and correct responses on the car seat knowledge test significantly increased (p&lt;0.05) for all items except for harness tightness (p=0.673). <h3>Conclusions</h3> Our child passenger safety intervention resulted in improved knowledge and increased self-reported use of CRs in a caregivers’ cohort in Lebanon. Further efforts should address sociocultural and economic barriers and the lack of local CPS technicians to mitigate the region’s pediatric road traffic injury and death toll.