World Health Assembly resolutions on violence and injury prevention: new opportunities for national action.

cials of the 192 member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) convene in Geneva, Switzerland for the World Health Assembly (WHA): a vast gathering of over 2000 senior national and international decision-makers in health. During the WHA, delegates discuss a broad range of health topics based on a proposed agenda that they adopt at the beginning of the session. The objective of the discussion is often to arrive at a consensus on actions to address an important public health topic. If an agreement is reached, a resolution may be adopted. A resolution usually consists of a two to three page document with a preamble (or background) and ‘operative paragraphs’ that describe activities that member states should undertake. Through these resolutions, the WHA also requests the Secretariat of WHO to carry out certain activities or studies to support member states. Resolutions are often developed after months – sometimes years – of preliminary discussions and negotiations. While not legally binding, resolutions are important international policy documents that set the stage for public health actions conducted by governments, civil society and WHO staff. Resolutions are considered the main tools for guiding WHO programmes. They provide WHO with a mandate to undertake activities in a specific area. Previous resolutions in areas as diverse as mental health, dengue fever and HIV have been instrumental in raising awareness and developing activities in these areas. In the last 2 years, the WHA has passed two important resolutions related to the field of injury prevention and safety promotion: WHA 56.24 – ‘Implementing the recommendations of the World report on violence and health’ (see Appendix 1) and WHA 57.10 – ‘Road safety and health’ (see Appendix 2). The objective of this paper is to draw attention to these resolutions because it is important that injury prevention and safety promotion experts and practitioners are aware of them in order to provide assistance and encouragement to their governments to implement them. These two resolutions were not the first on the topic: During its first 55 years of existence, the WHA passed another five resolutions, which focused on injury prevention (Box 1). In addition, there are a number of other resolutions that are indirectly relevant to injury prevention because they discuss related topics such as health promotion, child and adolescent health, women’s health, etc.