Faculty and students at Kennesaw State University’s SKYE Research Lab are working to address the issue of household hazards that result in child injuries and fatalities. The lab, founded by Assistant Professor of Nursing Melissa Osborne, focuses on understanding the causes of home injuries among children and developing methods to prevent them.
The SKYE Research Lab, which stands for “Safety and wellbeing of Kids and Youth in the home Environment,” combines technology, epidemiology, and public health research to study injury prevention. Osborne said her motivation is both personal and professional. “I know first-hand home safety can be challenging, especially when you have those little ones and they start getting mobile,” she said. “Those first five years are especially tricky, so I come at it from a personal standpoint. But as also a researcher, I know that this is an important thing we need to tackle to prevent child injury and have an impact at a population level.”
Injuries remain the leading cause of death among children in the United States, with unintentional injuries particularly affecting younger age groups.
One ongoing project involves KSU junior Allison Martinez and sophomore Sharon Pradeep analyzing parental attitudes about secure firearm storage at home. Their research included survey analysis and was presented at KSU’s Symposium of Student Scholars with guidance from Osborne.
Martinez has continued her research work with Osborne after switching her major from environmental science to integrated health science last summer. She expressed appreciation for learning new research skills: “I’m very used to collecting data hands-on because I’ve done a microbiology project in the past, but I learned that I can also slow down, read research papers and do the more intricate parts of research like the literature review,” Martinez said. “If I can be part of preventing child injury, it’d be something impactful.”
Osborne has led development on ParentSHIELD-VR, a virtual reality program designed to immerse parents in simulated home environments where they identify potential hazards such as firearms or unsafe areas in kitchens or bathrooms. This tool aims to provide a more interactive approach than traditional pamphlets or brief talks on home safety.
“Oftentimes when it comes to home safety education, parents get either a brief talk or a pamphlet on how to keep things safe at home and that’s it. We know that’s not how people change their behavior,” Osborne said. “With young children, supervision is so important and parents don’t always get the chance to practice that. This virtual reality program will allow them to engage supervision practices in a low-risk environment.”
The VR project brings together faculty from multiple disciplines including Lei Zhang and Brooke Zhao from the College of Computing and Software Engineering as well as Allison Garefino from Wellstar College of Health and Human Services.
Graduate student Caroline King joined SKYE Research Lab after completing her undergraduate degree in psychology at Florida State University. Now pursuing a Master of Social Work, King found alignment between her interests in helping children through counseling and Osborne’s focus on injury prevention. “In social work, helping the greater good and the greater population is really big for my interest,” King said. “The moment I read her synopsis before I interviewed with her, I decided this is exactly what I want to do.”
SKYE Research Lab has also partnered with Georgia State University’s National Center on Child Trafficking (NCCT) under a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The collaboration focuses on improving trauma treatment innovation for trafficked children by training professionals across various child-serving systems.
Martinez hopes these experiences will support her goal of becoming a trauma nurse: “I can connect that to my major in wanting to prevent trauma and informing parents,” she said. “I’m not yet sure about my specialty in nursing, but I can appreciate that I have something a little different in terms of experience with nursing and being involved in research.”
