Proclamation 5806 --
National Trauma Awareness Month, 1988
By
the President of the
A
Proclamation
We
can do a great deal of good for ourselves and our fellow Americans the more we
realize the toll traumatic injury takes each year in our country -- and the
more we understand that the extent of this toll is unnecessary, unacceptable,
and preventable. National Trauma Awareness Month is an excellent chance for all
of us to learn and to do more about the prevention and treatment of traumatic
injury.
Traumatic
injury is a major public health problem that mainly affects young people; it
kills more Americans before age 34 than do all diseases combined. Each year,
some 140,000 citizens lose their lives to traumatic injury, and 400,000 suffer
severe and often permanently disabling brain or spinal cord injury. Some of the
many causes include motor vehicle-related injuries, murder, suicide, and falls.
It
is up to all of us to learn how to reduce the risk of traumatic injury to
ourselves and our children. Citizens can initiate behavior changes and sustain
them, and volunteer groups, civic organizations, private businesses, health
care providers, researchers, academia, and government can all help discover and
implement new and more effective ways of preventing and treating traumatic
injury and of assisting victims and their families. Let us always remember that
our efforts in this regard will be a blessing to ourselves, our families, and
our neighbors.
The
Congress, by House Joint Resolution 373, has designated May 1988 as ``National
Trauma Awareness Month'' and authorized and requested the President to issue a
proclamation in observance of this occasion.
Now,
Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the
In
Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of April, in
the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-eight, and of the
Ronald
Reagan
[Filed with the Office
of the Federal Register,