Proclamation 5806

By the President of the United States of America 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 United States of America, do hereby proclaim the month of May 1988 as National Trauma Awareness Month. I urge the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate ceremonies and activities.

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 Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twelfth.

RONALD REAGAN

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 2:15 p.m., May 2, 1988]