Transportation-Public Health Leadership Program

In the United States, over 40,000 lives are lost annually on our roads, a staggering loss that underscores the preventable nature of many transportation incidents. We need urgent action.

A new training program, the Transportation-Public Health Leadership Program, will launch as a pilot program in fall of 2024. This program offers an opportunity for leaders from public health and transportation to adopt holistic, collaborative approaches to improve transportation safety.

The program will focus on transportation safety and injury prevention, with a special emphasis on fostering safety culture and leveraging public health methodologies. In addition to providing a foundational knowledge to integrate transportation and public health approaches, the program aims to:

• Inspire new ideas and interest,
• Facilitate and support implementation activities, and
• Cultivate a community of practice for sustained efforts.

In its first year, the pilot program is available to six project sites made up of regional partners. Practitioners working in transportation, health, and/or injury prevention roles at the State, regional, and local levels are encouraged to participate as a project site. State Highway Safety Office staff are particularly encouraged to attend with colleagues from their state’s health community and other regional practitioners to advance a cohort of diverse backgrounds and perspectives. The program also bolsters practitioner ongoing efforts in strategic plans or local action plans, as well as regional or federal award programs.

The program will facilitate learning and skill development using various methods, including live virtual group instruction, narrated case studies, group discussions, and individual assignments. Participants can expect 12 monthly sessions to focus on learning modules or coached, peer mentoring meetings, with light workload between sessions.

Learning modules will focus on core topics in road safety and public health and integrated approaches through tools and real-world examples. Module topics include:

Basics of Public Health and Transportation

Explore how to apply key public health principles in transportation safety programs. Gain insights to serve as a foundation for collaboration and fostering a culture of health and safety. Develop essential skills in partner asset and goal mapping.

Centering Equity

Uncover the nexus of health equity and transportation while learning about strategies to embed equity into transportation safety programs. Gain practical tools for assessing disparities and fostering authentic community engagement, advancing equitable solutions in public health and transportation.

Strategic Planning Through a Public Health Lens

Learn to seamlessly integrate public health approaches and partners into strategic plans and processes. Gain practical expertise in collaboration and implementable tools throughout strategic planning phases from problem identification to outcome monitoring.

Public Health Oriented Programming and Implementation

Identify innovative opportunities for joint program development, implementation, and evaluation with public health approaches and transportation safety. Increase confidence in ability to assess programming and workforce skills that bring in new, collaborative approaches.

Data Enhancement for Safety Monitoring and Evaluation

Delve into the relationship between public health and transportation safety data and integration efforts. Recognize the added value of health data sources in transportation safety, identify key data sources, and understand actionable steps to improve data sharing.

Coaches, trained facilitators, and subject matter experts will lead peer mentoring and team share sessions, interspersed between module topics.

Pilot Program

This program is led by the Highway Safety Research Center and Injury Prevention Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and supported by a grant from the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. Learn more about the Adopting a Public Health Approach to Traffic Safety project.