Prof John Langley, director of the University of Otago Injury Prevention Research Unit (IPRU), says, only partly jokingly, that there are two main risk factors for injury: being male, and excessive drinking.
One of the main issues is still alcohol, "because it's so pervasive".
"It's car crashes, it's assault, it's self-harm, it's unintended injury - it's right across the board - it's drowning, it's unsafe boating."
He points out that many of the people killed in late-night cooking fires in their homes have also been drinking.
And some parents who have rolled over in bed and unintentionally suffocated a baby have also been under the influence of alcohol, he adds.
Asked if there was one key thing he would change to reduce the burden of injuries and related deaths, he points to access to alcohol.
Dr Kypros Kypri, an Otago graduate and research associate of the IPRU, has also commented that earlier liberalisation has resulted in alcohol becoming more readily available, on a per capita basis, in New Zealand than in Australia, with negative consequences for injury and illness.
Prof Langley (59) agrees with recent New Zealand Law Commission recommendations on the need to reduce access to alcohol to reduce the burden of alcohol-related injury.
Some big changes have happened in injury prevention research since Prof Langley and the unit's former deputy director, Associate Prof David Chalmers, won a funding contract involving the then Medical Research Council - now Health Research Council - and the ACC, which resulted in the IPRU being established in 1990.
The unit has since greatly increased in size, from an initial staff of about four full-time people to about 30 full- and part-timers these days (amounting to about 20 full-time equivalent staff).
And the IPRU has also grown in international reputation, becoming recognised as one of the world's leading injury prevention research centres and its researchers, including Prof Langley, also contributing to world injury prevention studies.
Over the years, the unit has also attracted high-powered academic visitors from overseas injury prevention research centres.
When Prof Langley steps down as unit director next week, his successor will be leading United States researcher Dr Hank Weiss, who was director of the University of Pittsburgh's Centre for Injury Research and Control from 2002 to 2008.
Prof Langley has been the author or co-author of about 260 scientific articles on aspects of injury prevention and rehabilitation, not to mention many other reports and opinion pieces.
Prof Chalmers says Prof Langley was the main person to begin injury prevention research in New Zealand.
Prof Langley, working closely with Associate Prof Colin Cryer and many other researchers at the unit and abroad, had also contributed heavily to the development of injury prevention research in New Zealand in many fields, Prof Chalmers said.
And as the IPRU had grown, evolved and matured, Prof Langley had also encouraged its researchers to also assume leadership and pursue intensive research in their specialty fields, such as Dr Dorothy Begg in the field of road traffic injury, young drivers and the graduated driver licensing, and Dr Shyamala Nada-Raja in positive psychology, self-harm, suicide and youth mental health.
And the IPRU's research focus has broadened to include areas such as intentional injury, self-harm and rehabilitation.
In 2004, Prof Langley's significant contribution to international injury prevention research was recognised when the Washington-based American Public Health Association (APHA) presented him with an International Distinguished Career Award.
"He is an active advocate for improvements in injury prevention policy and practice," the APHA award citation noted.
Prof Langley was "credited with essentially founding the study of injury prevention and control in his home country of New Zealand."
"With the support of the International Collaborative Effort on Injury Statistics, he helped develop standardised injury indicators to compare data from different countries.
"Dr Langley has had a significant impact on injury prevention throughout the world and has contributed to publications on a wide range of injury prevention issues, collaborative research and community involvement," the citation noted.
Asked how much the IPRU had contributed to the reduction of fatal and serious injuries, Prof Langley said it was difficult to quantify this, modestly adding that the unit had "contributed to the debate" on injury prevention issues.
The IPRU research contribution has come in many fields, whether the safety issue is dog control, reducing the risk of hot-water scalding at home, increasing the legal drinking age, or lifting the driver licensing age from 15.
"While the unit has made many contributions to our knowledge about reducing injury, whether that knowledge gets applied depends on a wide range of factors, not the least of which are political.
"For example, the unit has shown that lowering the purchase age for alcohol was a disaster in terms of injuries to young people.
"Despite this, Parliament decided not to return the purchase age to 20 years of age."
In some ways, one of Prof Langley's greatest achievements is in the survival, as well as the flourishing, of the IPRU, given that all of its funding was contestable, so-called "soft money" which can never be taken for granted.
"We can be proud that we've maintained a substantial critical mass of researchers on soft money.
"It's a very competitive funding environment. We've been able to exist so long in that environment continuously. There's been the odd up and down, but nothing dramatic."
"By anyone's standards, that's a pretty good achievement."
Somewhat ironically, one of the reasons for Prof Langley stepping down as IPRU director is his desire to spend more time doing things that carry a fair degree of injury risk - such as tramping , mountain-biking, back-country skiing and windsurfing.
His appetite for the outdoors hasn't been deterred by his knowledge of the risk inherent in such quintessentially Kiwi activities.
In fact, he cannot wait for the chance to spend a month at a time on them.
"As a director you can't fit in too many extended trips away from the office," he says.
"If the weather's suddenly great for skiing you can't just leap in the car and go. I'm looking forward to being able to do that."
One thing he will not be doing is pursuing his earlier interest in mountaineering.
Harder and harder climbing challenges had also brought significantly increased risk.
"I got to the stage where I thought: `There's too much to live for'."
After he officially retires as director next week, he will continue working two days a week as a research investigator, fitting this work in alongside more adventurous pursuits.
After gaining an MA in psychology at Canterbury University and completing his PhD at Otago in 1985, he was a research fellow at Otago University's Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit when the Medical Research Council (MRC) of New Zealand organised a conference aimed at generating research interest in injury prevention.
The MRC was concerned that injury was a major cause of mortality and morbidity, yet they were receiving very few research grant applications in that area.
Prof Langley subsequently wrote a report to the MRC and ACC proposing that a dedicated unit be established that, through its critical mass, would generate better-quality research.
Three years later he and Prof Chalmers submitted the successful tender for the establishment of a unit within the Otago department of social and preventive medicine.
Prof Langley says it is not uncommon for people in his position to be asked what impact the research unit has had on reducing injury.
"Realistically you're never going to stop all serious injury occurring, so we've taken the international view that as well as trying to prevent the primary cause you can try to prevent losses associated with injury once it has occurred by looking at things like critical care and rehabilitation."
In addition to its crucial primary funding from HRC and ACC, the unit has attracted research funding from the likes of the Alcohol Advisory Council, Road Safety Trust, Ministry of Health and Lottery Health.
Prof Langley believes that as long as the unit, which is the only one of its kind in the country, continues to produce first-class research, it will flourish.
Fact file
Prof John Langley has been a pioneer of injury prevention research in New Zealand, having worked in the field since 1978 and having gained a PhD from the University of Otago in 1985.
In 1990, with backing from the then Medical Research Council and ACC, he and Associate Prof David Chalmers founded the university's Injury Prevention Research Unit.
