Martín-Cantera et al. BMC Public Health 2010, 10:136 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/10/136 S T U D Y P R O T O C O L Open Access Risk levels for suffering a traffic injury in primary health care. The LESIONAT* project Carlos Martín-Cantera1,2,3*, Daniel Prieto-Alhambra4, Lydia Roig5, Susana Valiente6, Katherine Perez7, Luis Garcia-Ortiz8, Jordi Bel9, Fernando Marques10, Xavier Mundet11, Xavier Bonafont12, Marti Birules13, Núria Soldevila14, Elena Briones15, LESIONAT Research Group Abstract Background: Literature shows that not only are traffic injuries due to accidents, but that there is also a correlation between different chronic conditions, the consumption of certain types of drugs, the intake of psychoactive substances and the self perception of risk (Health Belief Model) and the impact/incidence of traffic accidents. There are few studies on these aspects in primary health care. The objectives of our study are: Main aim: To outline the distribution of risk factors associated with Road Traffic Injuries (RTI) in a driving population assigned to a group of primary health care centres in Barcelona province. Secondly, we aim to study the distribution of diverse risk factors related to the possibility of suffering an RTI according to age, sex and population groups, to assess the relationship between these same risk factors and self risk perception for suffering an RTI, and to outline the association between the number of risk factors and the history of reported collisions. Methods/Design: Design: Cross-sectional, multicentre study. Setting: 25 urban health care centres. Study population: Randomly selected sample of Spanish/Catalan speakers age 16 or above with a medical register in any of the 25 participating primary health care centres. N = 1540. Unit of study: Basic unit of care, consisting of a general practitioner and a nurse, both of whom caring for the same population (1,500 to 2,000 people per unit). Instruments of measurement: Data collection will be performed using a survey carried out by health professionals, who will use the clinical registers and the information reported by the patient during the visit to collect the base- line data: illnesses, medication intake, alcohol and psychoactive consumption, and self perception of risk. Discussion: We expect to obtain a risk profile of the subjects in relation to RTI in the primary health care field, and to create a group for a prospective follow-up. Trial Registration: Clinical Trials.gov Identifier: NCT00778440. Background Traffic injuries are serious health problems that cause death, morbidity and disability, as well as an important impact on a country’s economy [1]. There are three high risk groups: 15-24 years old who use mopeds or motor- bikes, 18-34 years old driving as tourists, and over 65 years old pedestrians in urban areas. According to the last * Correspondence: Carlos.Martin@uab.es 1Departament of Medicine, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Catalan Health Survey (Enquesta de Salut a Catalunya ESCA) in 2006, 17.8% of those over 15 years of age had been injured in a road traffic accident (RTI) in the last year, 6.75% of whom had been injured in a road traffic col- lision in the previous two weeks. Figures for men were higher at 9.33% than for women at 4.33%. There were also differences in age with 8.05% aged between 15 and 44, 5.04% aged between 45 and 64 and 15.5% aged over 65 [2]. RTI are not coincidental, but they adhere to foresee- able factors. Medication and chronic conditions, despite © 2010 Martín-Cantera et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.