Next City article features PI’s health equity road map for realizing a vision of zero traffic fatalities 

Vision Zero, a growing movement among US cities, seeks to eliminate traffic-related deaths and severe injuries. In our latest brief, Vision Zero: A Health Equity Road Map for Getting to Zero in Every Community, featured in a Next City article published Friday, Prevention Institute makes the case that “getting to zero” requires an explicit focus on health equity, and offers three key recommendations.

Traffic crashes are a leading cause of death that’s on the rise in the US, and they impact low-income communities and communities of color at disproportionate rates. Problems like persistent disinvestment and inadequate planning exacerbate the conditions that lead to inequities in injuries. Further, common traffic safety interventions like enhanced enforcement can sometimes inadvertently exacerbate inequities in communities that have a long history of experiencing discrimination and even brutality at the hands of law enforcement, if implemented poorly.

“To work from a health equity lens you need to look at the root causes,” says Elva Yanez, report co-author and PI’s director of health equity, in the Next City article. “Look at the policies, practices and norms that have allowed these disparities to arise in the first place.”

The brief offers three recommendations to incorporate health equity into traffic safety planning and implementation in the US: 

1. Identify conditions that create traffic-safety inequities in the first place 
   To address traffic safety concerns, it’s essential to first understand the community conditions that determine which places and people are at risk and why. A comprehensive set of strategies can then be designed to address those conditions and prevent deaths and injuries before they occur. 
   
   
2. Engage diverse partners and start with community members to define safe solutions
   When it comes to preventing traffic injuries and deaths, many sectors have a role to play – not just health and transportation. That means working with government agencies such as public works, parks and recreation, and public safety, as well as with community-based organizations and other community partners like local businesses. Leveraging the lived experience of community members is also essential to this process. 
   
   
3. Collect and use data that gets at equity 
   Robust, high-quality data is necessary to identify which communities and populations experience the greatest burden of traffic-related injuries and deaths, for pinpointing their underlying causes, and for monitoring and evaluating interventions. This includes what information is collected and how, how the data is used, and who has access to it. 

For more information, read the full Vision Zero brief here.