Vicki Hill loves her job as director of the ThinkFirst program at Children’s Hospital because of the interaction she has with children on a regular basis. As a mother of three, she knows how important it is for children to listen to what she teaches them about brain and spinal cord safety.

ThinkFirst is a relatively new community outreach program at Children’s Hospital that focuses on brain and spinal cord injury prevention.

Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death in children between the ages of 1 and 21. In Alabama, approximately 1,500 children sustain traumatic brain and/or spinal cord injuries every year. Hill says the summer is the time of year when the hospital receives the largest number of traumatic, unintentional brain and/or spinal cord injuries.

“Children have more free time in the summer, so there is a greater potential for them to hurt themselves. I urge parents to make sure their children wear helmets when riding bikes, scooters or skateboards, to make sure their swimming pools have adequate amounts of water in them and to know what their children are doing at all times,” Hill says.

The national ThinkFirst program began in 1986 when the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons created the National Head and Spinal Cord Injury Prevention Program. In 1990, the program adopted the name ThinkFirst.

In Alabama, the ThinkFirst program began at the University of Alabama at Birmingham but moved to Children’s in September 2003 because children are the program’s main focus. As part of the program, Hill travels to schools across the state teaching students in grades K through 12 about brain and spinal cord anatomy. Following the anatomy portion of the program, ThinkFirst then focuses on teaching children about prevention, featuring the slogan “Use your mind to protect your body.” The program focuses on motor safety, playground safety, sports safety, pool safety, bicycle safety, and violence and gun safety.

Jay Wellons, M.D., a pediatric neurosurgeon at Children’s Hospital, serves as ThinkFirst’s Medical Director. Dr. Wellons, who sometimes travels with Hill as she traverses the state, loves the opportunity the program gives him to work directly with children.

“ThinkFirst has a potential for great impact for the children of Alabama,” Dr. Wellons says, “because we get to interact with them, talk to them and teach them something. We’re not just talking at them.

“We have an interesting program that we get to show them, and we also get to try to make a difference in the lives of children and adolescents throughout Alabama,” Dr. Wellons adds.

In the future, Hill hopes to find volunteers who have suffered brain and/or spinal cord injuries to get involved in the program. She wants them to visit the schools with her to provide a testimony of how their injuries have affected them and how the students can prevent a similar injury.

For more information about the program, visit www.chsys.org.