Figure 1.1 Years of potential life lost versus the federal research investment. Note: Age-adjusted years of potential life lost (YPLL) before age 75 in 1996 was calculated per 100,000 population. Injury includes unintentional injury, homicide, and suicide. The research support for injury is for FY 1995; research support for cancer, heart diseases, and stroke is NIH support for FY 1996. Sources: NCIPC (1997); IOM (1998); NCHS (1998).

medical care, but the committee also addressed trauma research and injury prevention, recommending creation of a National Institute on Trauma at the National Institutes of Health (to sponsor and conduct a program of injury treatment research) and a National Council on Accident Prevention in the executive branch (to coordinate and advise federal regulatory agencies and to provide support for research and program development).

Nearly 20 years later, the Committee on Trauma Research established by the NRC and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) conducted a new study at Congress's direction and issued what has become a landmark report, Injury in America (NRC, 1985). That committee recommended a major national program of research to address "serious, but remediable, inadequacies in the understanding of and approach to injury as a health problem." The significance of Injury in America lies both in its intellectual contribution and in its influence on national policy. Intellectually, the committee set forth the rationale for conceptualizing "injury prevention and control" as a distinct field of interdisciplinary research, drawing together what had been separate strands of scientific study within the framework of public health. In terms of public policy, the committee recommended a major investment in injury research, commensurate with the magnitude of the problem, and proposed creation of a center for injury research within the Centers for Disease Control, now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The committee envisioned that the new center would (1) conduct and support research in biomechanics, injury epidemiology and prevention, and