Collaboration for Traffic Safety

From Winter 1994
Volume I, Number 1

In one sense, the field of injury prevention began with traffic safety. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration was established (as the National Highway Safety Bureau) in 1966 under the direction of Dr. William Haddon, Jr., one of the first to apply rigorous scientific methodology to injury prevention. But public health practitioners were also involved in traffic safety from the start. Dr. Haddon, for example, did much of his initial ground-breaking research while with the New York State Department of Public Health.

As medical and social progress lowered both the prevalence and effects of disease, the impact of injuries became more visible. Injury prevention as a public health discipline achieved more widespread visibility with the publication of the National Academy of Sciences report Injury in America in 1985. While new specialties, such as violence prevention, have arisen, so has the recognition that injury prevention efforts are most effective when they draw upon a wide range of intervention strategies, academic disciplines, public agencies, and private organizations.

Both traffic safety and public health professionals want to reduce the number and severity of injuries that result from motor vehicle collisions, including those that involve pedestrians and bicyclists. Working together toward this common goal can help professionals in both types of agencies do their jobs more effectively, reach more people with their programs, and have a greater impact in promoting traffic safety and reducing motor vehicle-related injuries.

There is no one model of inter-agency collaboration that will fit every situation. Many elements affect the ways in which agencies collaborate. These include their goals and objectives, the number of agencies involved, the resources available (including the time that staff have to devote to the project), and the geographic area over which the agencies are spread. This newsletter will explore some of the ways in which traffic safety and public health professionals can collaborate at a regional level using examples from a number of activities facilitated by regional NHTSA and PHS offices.

Introduction

The focus of the issue will be on five regions, each of which has taken a different approach to collaborative activities. These regions (and their constituent states are): While none of these regional projects focuses exclusively on traffic safety, all are engaged in traffic safety activities and all include participation by state traffic safety offices and the regional NHTSA office, as well as other agencies including state departments of health and emergency medical services, the Indian Health Service, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB). Each region is the site of periodic meetings in which traffic safety and injury prevention professionals share information and resources. Many of these efforts rely on in-kind contributions of time and resources from participating agencies, and the personal energy of their members, although a few have received small grants for specific projects, and occasional contributions of space and resources from private sources.

Participants in such collaborative activities are universally enthusiastic. They report that the exchange of resources and information with their counterparts in other states (a well as with representatives from federal agencies and other organizations, such as the CDC-funded Injury Prevention Research Centers) provided new perspectives and ideas. Collaboration was found to provide benefits not just across states, but within states. One comment heard almost verbatim from participants in all five regions was that these projects often provided the first opportunity for traffic safety professionals to sit down at the same table with injury prevention specialists form their own states. This, in itself, they reported, makes the experience worthwhile.

Initiating Regional Collaborations

Regional collaboration can begin in many ways. The regional MCH or NHTSA administrator may take the lead and invite hi or her counterpart in the other agency to begin a collaborative venture. Or state public health or traffic safety staff may meet at a conference and decide that networking at a regional level would be valuable. Each of the collaborations we chose to highlight below began in a slightly different fashion, although all were predicated on the initiative and foresight of individuals in the region.

The country's first regional meeting of traffic safety and injury prevention professionals took place in April 1990 in Atlanta, when the Region IV NHTSA office and the CDC co-sponsored a meeting of representatives from that region' Governor's Highway Safety Offices and state health departments. This meeting proved so successful that staff from the Region IV office and the Injury Prevention Research Center at the University of North Carolina took the initiative to coordinate what became the first meeting of the Southeastern Region Injury Control Network.

The Region X Collaborative Injury Prevention Network began as a meeting of state MCH program representatives initiated by the MCH Regional Injury Prevention Contact with support from the Regional Director of Preventive Health Services (CDC). The Region X NHTSA representative was invited to talk about a safety belt promotion program as well as the traffic safety training and materials available from NHTSA. The success of this meeting convinced the participants that it would be worthwhile to hold periodic meetings with a broad representation of traffic safety and injury prevention agencies from the region.

Collaboration in Region I began with the New England Network to Prevent Childhood Injuries, which was funded by the MCHB and composed of the MCH directors from each of the six New England states. While the New England Network to Prevent Childhood Injuries no longer exists, the Region I NHTSA office, the Harvard Injury Control Center, and the regional MCH office have expanded activities in Region I to involve other public health and traffic safety professionals.

In Region VII, the regional NHTSA and MCH offices asked state highway safety and public health offices to designate representatives to a regional collaboration. These representatives constituted themselves as the Region VII Highway Safety/Public Health Injury Prevention Working Group.

Getting Together

While networking is not an expensive activity, meeting on a regional basis ca be prohibitive for member so state agencies with limited travel budgets. There are many ways in which agencies can address this issue. Each of the region used as examples here has taken a different approach. Region VII holds "virtual" meetings through conference calls. This is a relatively low-cost way of "getting together." Each state's participants, however, come together in the same room for these calls, a procedure that has proved invaluable for establishing interagency cooperation and communication within each of the participating states. Meeting via conference calls does not prohibit inviting guest speakers. Typical agenda items include a review of each state's injury prevention activities and injury-related legislation, the generation of ideas for region-wide activities, and feedback on the resource mailings sent to the participants by the regional NHTSA office.

Another alternative, used by the Region X Collaborative Injury Prevention Network, is rotating meetings among the member states. While this entails travel expense for some participants, it allows broad participation from the host state and the periodic participation of state agency staff who cannot afford out-of-state travel. The host state typically pays meeting expenses, recruits participants from within the state, and makes a presentation on its injury prevention activities.

The Southeastern Region Injury Control Network (SERICN, Region IV) holds its quarterly meetings in Atlanta. Both for the CDC-funded injury Prevention Research Centers located in the region (at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the University of Alabama-Birmingham) have included line items in their budgets covering some transportation expenses for state officials who otherwise could not afford to attend. Transportation expenses for other participants are paid by their agencies or by CDC capacity-building grants (if their state has one).

In Region I, professionals and researchers come together at conferences and workshops, each of which promotes collaboration and provides participants with valuable information on injury prevention research, funding, and regional and national resources. These events will be discussed at greater length below.

The number and types of people involved in these regional collaborations vary. In some cases, only representatives from public health and traffic safety offices take part. In others, participants include representatives including state emergency medical service offices, law enforcement, and education; environmental health agencies; and federal agencies such as the Indian Health Service, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; federally funded projects such as the Injury Prevention Research Centers; and representative of state health department injury advisory committees.

Working Together

Interagency collaboration at the regional level allows participants to become involved in a wide range of activities. Participants in the collaborative activities described above touted the ability of networking to bring people together and share ideas, information, resources, and program experience. Many were particularly enthusiastic about sharing information on the status and impact of injury- and safety-related legislation. For example, states having child safety restraint or motorcycle helmet laws in place can help others by sharing their state's experience in passing, upgrading, or repelling attacks on such laws. They can also describe their agency's role in providing evaluation information and the names of expert witnesses for legislative hearings.

Regional collaboration can also provide an opportunity to undertake joint projects to promote traffic safety and reduce injury rates. The Region X Collaborative Injury Prevention Network, for example, is working with the Children's Safety Network Injury Data Technical Assistance Center in San Diego to create standard injury groupings as well as specialized software that will allow state agencies to quickly provide data in response to public or government data requests. These data can also be used by states completing the needs assessment or problem identification portion of grant applications.

The Southeastern Region Injury Control Network (Region IV) is creating an inventory of Motor Vehicle Injury Control Laws and developing fact sheets on these laws in its member states. The SERICN has expanded the involvement of its member states in initiatives such as the NHTSA Summertime Blues campaign, the Midas Muffler Safety Seat Program, and the Safe Kids Campaign. The Southeastern Network is also attempting to anticipate the injury problem that might result from increased traffic in the region generated by the upcoming Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

In 1991 and 1992, with support from the CDC-funded Harvard Injury Control Center (HICC), EDC worked with the Region I NHTSA office to organize two Building Bridges Between Traffic Safety and Public Health conferences. HICC funding also allowed EDC to support collaborative projects involving health departments and highway safety offices in three states. Rhode Island expanded its car seat loaner program; Maine trained community agencies on responding to the traffic injury problem; and New Hampshire developed educational materials on the safe transport of children with special health care needs.

In the summer of 1993, Region I NHTSA collaborated with the Massachusetts Governor's Highway safety Bureau to sponsor Youth at Risk: A New England Conference on Underage Drinking, which included the participation of the CSAP-funded community partnership projects as well as more than 60 teenagers from the New England states. A follow-up youth conference is planned for this summer. In addition, a workshop to be held later this year will enable teams of highway safety, public health, substance abuse, and education professionals from each New England state to develop or expand a project aimed at improving motor vehicle safety among teenagers. More information about these meetings is available from the Region I NHTSA office.

The California Childhood Injury Prevention Conference provides an annul networking and educational opportunity for public health, injury prevention, and traffic safety professionals from all over the western United States. This event is sponsored by the California Center for Childhood Injury Prevention and the California Department of Health Services. Many other agencies are involved in this event, including the Region IX NHTSA office and the California office of Traffic Safety. The conference, which is in its eighth year, covers a broad range of injury prevention and traffic safety issues. In the past, traffic safety workshops have focused on topics including pedestrian injuries and new technologies for motor vehicle safety (including air bags and anti-lock brakes).

This year's conference will feature a workshop on alcohol and traffic safety, which will summarize the progress made on this issue in recent years as well as feature presentations on two alcohol-related projects. One of these is a program at Stanford University in which college students provide server training for bars and restaurants in their community. Another is a peer program in which former teenage DWI offenders teach others about the dangers of drinking and driving. This program is, in itself, an interesting example of interagency collaboration in that it is run by the Juvenile Delinquency and Crime Prevention Branch of the California Office of Criminal Justice, with funding provided by the California Office of Traffic Safety.

The Califoria Childhood Injury Prevention Conference also holds, as an annual event, a panel discussion called "New Partners in Injury Prevention" in which public health and traffic safety professionals, as well as those from other fields, discuss interagency and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Lethal Weapon, Liquid Death Video

As part of its Sober Roadways for Washington campaign, the Washington Office of Emergency Medical Services and Trauma Systems (EMS/TS) created two short videotapes, Lethal Weapon, Liquid Death and Why Did You Do It? These were designed to be used by EMS provider in presentations warning adult or teen groups about the danger of impaired and drunk driving. Because of the enthusiastic response these products received at a Region X Collaborative Injury Prevention Network meeting, the EMS/TS office has provided copies to other states in the area, dubbing in data and legal information from the state in which the tapes will be shown. Without the Collaborative Injury Prevention Network, states other than Washington would never have known about, or had access to, these resources. For more information, contact Kathy Williams, Department of Health, Office of Emergency Medical Services/Trauma Systems, 2725 Harrison Ave., N.W., Suite 500, P.O. Box 47853, Olympia, WA 98505-7853. Phone: (206) 705-6738.

For More Information

Region I: Mario Damiata or Alison Cohen, Region I NHTSA Office: (617) 494-3427; or Shirley Smith, Region I PHS Office: (617) 565-1461

Region IV: Belinda Jackson, Region IV NHTSA Office: (404) 347-4537; or John Kehoe, Region IV PHS Office: (404) 331-5395

Southeastern Region Injury Control Network: Steven Davidson, Children's Health Services, Georgia Department of Human Resource: (404) a679-0542; or Anne Ringland, North Carolina Governor's Highway Safety Office: (919) 733-3083

Region VII: Highway Safety/Public Health Injury Prevention Working Group: Judy Craig, Region VII NHTSA Office: (816) 822-7233; or Bradley Applebaum, Region VII PHS Office: (816) 426-2924

Region X: Collaborative Injury Prevention Network: Peggy West, Region X PHS Office: (206) 615-2484; or Rosemary Nye, Region X NHTSA Office: (206) 220-7640

Region IX: Craig Miller, Region IX NHTSA Office: (415) 744-3089; or Reginald Louie, Region IX PHS Office: (415) 556-6033

Children's Safety Network Data Technical Assistance Center, San Diego, California: Leslie Upledger-Ray, (619) 594-3691

California Center for Childhood Injury Prevention, San Diego, California: Charlene Allert, (619) 594-3691

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