We gave her funding for a pilot project. She contacted all the CTSPs that were working with health departments and developed a manual on starting a CTSP and a checklist/idea guide for grant applications. She also developed a brochure that we sent to all health departments letting them know that traffic safety programs work. As a consequence, five health departments implemented CTSPs.
We designed a three-phase program to get additional health departments involved. The first phase was a survey of city and county health departments, developed with input from ODPS, NHTSA, local health departments, health commissioners, directors of nursing, and directors of health education. The survey assessed current health department activities and needs. We also asked each department to name a contact person to work with us on traffic safety issues. As a result of the survey, we decided to provide local health departments with traffic safety materials and information on new traffic safety campaigns, traffic safety funding, and building a community traffic safety task force; and identify a traffic safety contact person within each department.
In Phase II, materials were pilot-tested in three health departments. These materials included a resource kit with information on safety belts, child passenger safety, and drinking and driving. In Phase III we distributed these materials to all local health departments.
There are many barriers to keeping a CTSP going after its initial funding ends. A few CTSPs have died. But the majority have expanded or shifted emphasis to programs like SAFE KIDS. They are finding a lot of different funding sources.
Current traffic safety programs involving the cooperation of ODPS, the state health department, and local health departments, include 5 state grants to health departments, 10 SAFE KIDS coalitions, 170 child passenger safety programs in hospitals and 62 in health departments, and 19 CTSPs in health departments that are continuing with other funding.
We also are in the process of forming the Ohio Traffic Safety/Injury Prevention Committee with the goals of getting health department traffic safety programs talking with one another and encouraging additional health departments to become involved in traffic safety. The committee is holding regional networking meetings, creating a new resource kit, and sponsoring a statewide traffic safety/public health conference. It also is going to establish a mentoring program. Each health department that has been successful in developing traffic safety activities has had a coordinator. We're asking each of these coordinators to take one other city or county health department, find a person who can really make a difference, and mentor that person.
We're finding all these connections. But our biggest challenge is learning how to pull all these people together. How do we motivate all these little groups to work together for one cause? It's going to be a challenge.
We had to overcome two barriers. The first was getting television stations to broadcast our PSAs at a time when people would be watching, rather than in the middle of the night. By involving the stations in the productions of the PSAs and featuring their on-air personnel in the spots, we created a sense of ownership by the stations. People support what they help to create. As a consequence, we got airplay during prime time, the Olympics, and the Johnny Carson show. The stations ran the PSAs for a full year.
The second barrier was getting viewers to pay attention to the announcements. We overcame this obstacle by featuring local landmarks and local people in the PSAs. We know from the public's response to the campaign that this also worked quite well.
The purpose of our project was to help EMS agencies act as aggressively in treating the causes of motor vehicle injuries as they do in their treatment of the injuries. EMS providers are on the front line in the battle to save lives on the highways. Everyday, they treat thousands of people injured in traffic crashes. The credibility born of direct experience, coupled with strong community ties and high local visibility, makes EMS providers ideal partners in collaborative community-based highway safety programs.
The next summer, we had some CDC money allotted for public education on youth drinking and driving. We learned that the Governor's Office of Highway Safety had similar plans. So we pooled our resources and put together the .04: That's All It Takes campaign. The joint funding really strengthened that project. The following summer we worked together on Buckle Up Rhode Island, a safety belt campaign. The department of health did not have any money to contribute, but took an active role in the campaign.
There's been a real evolution in how we work together on legislation. During the first couple of years I was involved in the Injury Prevention Program. The department of health and the Governor's Office of Highway Safety would each draft its own versions of safety belt and motorcycle helmet legislation, and the governor would have to decide which bill to submit. Both agencies would support whichever bill was submitted. In the last few years, we've talked about who should submit legislation and how to support it. Our efforts complement one another very well. The department of health can pull in people to effectively testify about data and traffic injuries as a health problem. The Governor's Office of Highway Safety pulls in the law enforcement people.
We have also worked together on a number of data enhancement projects. The department of health EMS division had been funded to work on a computerized ambulance runsheet. Staff cutbacks and downsizing had made it very difficult to get that system up and running. The Injury Prevention Program contributed some money and worked with the EMS division on software and training. Highway Safety purchased some hardware. Sometimes it looked like it would never happen, but our partnership helped and the system is operational.
The Office of the Medical Examiner also has a lot of valuable information for looking at motor vehicle injuries. The Governor's Office of Highway Safety had given money to computerize that system. We have also been working with them to move that system forward.
Not every effort has a happy ending. The Governor's Office of Highway Safety wanted to fund a study on the costs of motor vehicle injury in Rhode Island. We wanted to be the primary managers of that project. But we soon realized that, because of various administrative constraints, we were not going to be able to effectively do that. So we gave the money back and asked them to find someone else to do the job. But we are still involved as part of the advisory committee.
The projects that have kept the Injury Prevention Program busiest have been the small grants jointly funded by the department of health and the Governor's Office of Highway Safety. These projects have focused on issues including child safety seats, safety belts, impaired driving, and bicycle safety. Rhode Island is somewhat unique in that it does not have local health departments. So the state department of health works with lots of different kinds of agencies. The small-grant projects have involved a mix of the types of agencies with which the department of health traditionally works, such as schools and health clinics, and those agencies that are more likely to be involved with the Governor's Office of Highway Safety, such as the police.
One of the more recent collaborative efforts in which we were involved was a more informal project. Rhode Island has the dubious honor of receiving ISTEA [Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act] penalty money for not having a motorcycle helmet law. We worked with the Governor's Office of Highway Safety to plan how we would use those funds. It was a very effective process that involved a variety of agencies.
Our most recent collaborative planning effort was a SAFE KIDS coalition retreat, which took place the day before I left for this conference.
We were asked to talk about barriers to collaboration. I see very few. Our major strength is just how much the two offices and their staffs respect and enjoy working with each other. It's been a wonderful collaboration and will continue to be so in the future.
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Revised: October 28, 1996
