Introduction

Motor vehicle crashes take a profound toll on our society. They are the major cause of unintentional injuries for Americans of all ages, and the leading cause of death for people between the ages of 6 and 33. They are also the leading cause of workplace injury and the major cause of serious head and spinal cord injury. Historically, traffic injury prevention has been the responsibility of state highway safety offices. However, as injury prevention has emerged as a distinct discipline within public health, professionals in this field have also taken an active role in the prevention of motor vehicle, pedestrian, and bicycle-related injuries and deaths. Emergency medical services (EMS) professionals, whose traditional role has been transporting and treating those injured in motor vehicle crashes, have also added injury prevention to their agenda.

It did not take long for these three groups to discover one another. It took longer for them to begin to understand one another's perspectives, vocabularies, constraints, and strengths. All three professions realize that the most effective approaches to injury prevention are comprehensive, involving a number of types of interventions and agencies. This knowledge has given traffic safety, public health, and EMS professionals the impetus to work together in an era of budgetary constraints and scarce resources. All three groups understand that working together effectively means avoiding the duplication of efforts and the misunderstandings that can arise in interdisciplinary collaborations, and presenting the public and policymakers with consistent injury prevention messages.

An important step in this collaborative process took place in Sacramento, California, on September 24, 1994, as state officials from highway safety agencies, public health injury prevention programs, and emergency medical services came together for a day of discussion about interagency collaboration to prevent motor vehicle injuries. This conference, Putting Partnerships Into Practice, was designed to facilitate collaborative working relationships among highway safety, emergency medical services, and public health professionals. It was made possible with funding from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and planned by the Health and Injury Committee of the National Association of Governors' Highway Safety Representatives (NAGHSR) and the State and Territorial Injury Prevention Directors Association (STIPDA).

Putting Partnerships Into Practice was held on the weekend between the annual meetings of STIPDA and NAGHSR so members from both organizations could attend. Approximately 150 attended. The conference included opening remarks, a working lunch, and a concluding general session. The core of the event consisted of two panel discussions, each including representatives from traffic safety, public health, and emergency medical services, and two regionally organized workshops where participants discussed and elaborated upon the themes defined by the panelists. The morning panel, and its associated breakout session, explored "Barriers to Collaboration and Strategies to Overcome Them." The afternoon panel discussed "Strengths and Resources" that could be brought to collaborative efforts. During the afternoon breakout session, participants not only discussed this theme, but established goals and objectives (both at the state and regional levels) for collaborative efforts and strategies. Staff of Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) will be contacting many of the participants in the upcoming year to learn about the collaborative efforts that have occurred as a result of Putting Partnerships Into Practice. These experiences will be summarized in a written report.

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Revised: October 28, 1996

Š1997 Education Development Center, Inc.