Phone: (410) 955-4121
E-mail: cares@jhsph.edu To schedule a visit by the CARES Safety Center at your next community event, click here. For information about car seat purchases, installations and inspections, click here.
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, and the Baltimore City Fire Department launched the Johns Hopkins CARES Safety Center in 2004 to keep children safe from unintentional injury, the leading cause of death for children nationwide.
The mobile safety center is a forty-foot vehicle built as a house on wheels, with fun, interactive exhibits and low-cost safety products. It visits Baltimore neighborhoods to teach parents and caregivers about the injury risks children face at home and ways to make the home a safer place. It was created through a partnership with the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Maryland Science Center, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, and Johns Hopkins Children’s Safety Center, in addition to the Baltimore City Fire Department and the Center for Injury Research and Policy and with input from community advisors. The CARES Safety Center resembles a typical home with a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and stairway to illustrate potential hazards and preventive measures. For example, an onboard smoke generator and heating elements installed in a door simulate the conditions inside a home during a fire. Trained instructors from the Bloomberg School and Baltimore’s fire department use interactive exhibits in each of the rooms to teach parents and children how to prevent burns, falls, strangulation, poisoning and other unintended injuries in their homes and neighborhoods. The vehicle is also equipped with safety products, including car safety seats, bicycle helmets, safety gates and cabinet locks, which are offered for sale at below-retail costs. Curious? Watch a short video of the CARES Mobile Safety Center. For a calendar of upcoming community safety events, click here. “Thank you for making our Safety Day at Jai Medical Center such a success. We were impressed with the CARES Safety Center and how you were able to demonstrate risks lurking in every room, as well as what to do in case of a fire. The information was beneficial to both the children and adults that visited the Safety Center.”
-Jai Medical Systems
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Current operating costs are covered through a generous three-year grant from CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. Grants from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health allowed faculty at Johns Hopkins to evaluate the impact of the mobile safety center and its utility as a dissemination vehicle for lifesaving safety products. Founding sponsors of the mobile safety center include BP, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation. The vehicle was constructed by Lifeline Shelter Systems Inc. of Columbus, Ohio, and the educational exhibits were installed by Phoenixx Design Associates of York, Pennsylvania. | 
