Safe Communities Workshops
From Spring 1997Volume IV, Number 1
This project is designed to increase the number and impact of Safe
Communities programs. (For more information on Safe Communities, see
the spring 1996 edition of Building Bridges.
) This initiative is
designed for communities in which agencies and organizations are already
collaborating on projects to prevent injuries and promote traffic safety.
Workshop activities focusing on community assessment, team building, and the
Safe Communities approach to injury prevention culminate in the creation
of an action plan that describes how participants will create their own Safe
Community coalitions. The workshop will transform limited and sometimes ad hoc
relationships into Safe Community programs that:
Communities wishing to take advantage of these workshops are required to send a multidisciplinary team with some experience in working together. These teams should be composed of seven or eight individuals representing the professions and agencies that should be involved in a comprehensive injury prevention project, including traffic safety, injury prevention, public health, medicine, business, law enforcement, social services, EMS, and education.
NHTSA will offer workshops in states in which the state highway safety office agrees to cosponsor the event and recruit between three and eight communities able to send multidisciplinary teams with some collaborative experience. NHTSA encourages highway safety offices to enlist the state health department as an additional cosponsor. NHTSA will supply all participant materials, audiovisual equipment, and workshop faculty.
The workshops are facilitated by faculty teams representing the disciplines that should be involved in a Safe Communities coalition. Each faculty team includes at least one person from a NHTSA regional office, medical professionals, and staff from the state cosponsors, who contribute their knowledge of local problems, traffic laws, and data sources. NHTSA has implemented a major faculty development effort to assist regional staff and others to facilitate the workshops effectively.
The workshop was piloted in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in October 1996. Two
months later, with
the sponsorship of the Ohio Governor's Highway Safety Program, 72 participants
from 10
communities gathered in Columbus to begin the process of developing
comprehensive injury prevention programs in their towns and cities. Jill
Cochran from the Ohio Governor's Highway Safety Program reported that the
workshop was well received by all of the teams:
The Ohio Governor's Highway Safety Program will continue to support the local Safe Communities programs with a series of quarterly workshops on issues that include marketing, problem identification, and countermeasures.
One of the workshop participants, Sergeant Randy Harvey of the Clermont County Sheriff's Office, reported that his team was enthusiastic about the ideas presented at the event. The resulting Clermont County Safe Community coalition includes representatives from more than 30 organizations, such as municipal police departments, the County Board of Health and Engineering Office, Clermont Mercy Hospital, the University of Cincinnati-Clermont, several EMS agencies, and the Clermont 2001 Planning Committee. The 20-member Steering Committee has formed subcommittees, each of which is using local data to analyze a particular injury problem (such as traffic injuries) and select countermeasures to be applied to that problem.
For more information on the Collaborating to Prevent Traffic Injuries and/or the Safe Communities workshop series, consult your region's NHTSA office. A list of these offices was published in the summer 1996 issue of Building Bridges.
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Revised: June 24, 1997
