I concur with Larry—get out of your profession silo.

Twenty-five years ago, colleagues in childhood injury prevention wanted to tell traffic engineers *why* they needed to traffic calm residential streets. We wanted to inform engineers where motorists injure children plus that children lack the cognitive and physiological abilities to cope with the dangers of traffic. We submitted an article to ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers) Journal. It took a long time for them to decide and they published it online, and not in their paper journal, which was setback in that era. 
These were new ideas 25 years ago. Injury was the primary focus then, and professional people actually talked of discouraging, or even prohibiting children from bicycling. With the awareness of the health and psychosocial benefits of activity, that thinking has evolved. 

Today, the concept that how we travel affects our health (and others’) is still relatively poorly understood. So think broadly. Consider journals aimed at public works and local governments (e.g. Governing Magazine). Find sympathetic colleagues in different fields. 

The aphorism is that Moses wandered in the desert for 40 years to wait for two generations to pass. We need to change faster. 

Best wishes,
Peter Jacobsen 



On Feb 27, 2023, at 11:17 AM, Frank, Lawrence <lawrence.frank@ubc.ca> wrote:



Hi Matt:

 

Many here can comment about where to publish, but nearly all of the transportation journals regularly publish articles on health related work now.  We have published in nearly all of them and in some quite a lot.  Editors change over time and some are more and less receptive to a given style of research and perhaps even specific researchers. 

 

If you have a few papers; perhaps put one in transportation, one in urban planning, and another in public health for exposure and coverage.  Look at the CV’s of those that have been at this for a while to see which journals they tend to publish most recently to give you a sense of receptivity of current editors. 

 

Sincerely,

 

Larry

Dr. Lawrence Frank, Professor

UC San Diego - Dept of Urban Studies and Planning

Social Sciences Public Engagement Building (PEB)

9625 Scholars Drive North MC 0517, PEB La Jolla, CA 92093 

 

Honorary Healthy Cities Professor Faculty of Architecture Hong Kong University

Affiliate Professor in Population and Public Health University of British Columbia

 

 

 

From: Sheryl Gross-Glaser <grossglaser@gmail.com>
Reply-To: TRB Health and Transportation <trbhealth@mailman.chrispy.net>
Date: Monday, February 27, 2023 at 9:51 AM
To: TRB Health and Transportation <trbhealth@mailman.chrispy.net>
Subject: [TRBHealth] Re: Which Transportation Research journal for health?

 

[CAUTION: Non-UBC Email]

Hi Matt,

 

I am mostly retired from the transportation world, but I will share what are solely my own opinions. While there is lots of data about the health benefits of walking and biking as exercise; and, in contrast, the terrible health effects of a sedentary life that involves just sitting in a car, there is insufficient transportation-focused  public health research and especially outreach about how the ordinary, daily practices of how we transport ourselves from place to place have major health ramifications.

 

If we think about the major gains in health due to banning cigarette and alcohol ads on TV and other media, as well as complementary public health ads, we would do well to take a similar approach around transportation. Banning car and truck ads, which only show people traveling in unrealistic settings (such as empty city streets or in pristine mountain settings) could help steer us away from poor health and 30-to-40,000 road deaths per year in the US alone.

 

Well that is my rant. I wish you the best of luck in your studies. This is important work that you are doing.

 

Enjoy a lovely afternoon,

Sheryl

 

On Mon, Feb 27, 2023 at 12:03 PM Matthew A. Raifman <matthew.raifman@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

Hope you are doing well. I'm a PhD Candidate in Environmental Health at Boston University and looking for some insight on which Transportation Research journal (parts A-D) is most interested in transport and health research as I don't see health in any of their descriptions. Separately, I do find it interesting that health is missing. I'm preparing one of my dissertation aims for publication and it is focused on the health benefits of increasing walking and cycling activity in the Greater Boston area using a k-means clustering approach on top of travel survey data and health impact assessment.

 

Thanks for your thoughts! Alternatively the Journal of Transport & Health seems quite appropriate for this research, but I thought I'd inquire about TRB publications here as well.

 

Best,

Matt

 

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Matthew Raifman

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To connect with committee visit: https://trbhealth.org

You received this because you are subscribed to the mailing list maintained by the TRB Health committee (AME70). To unsubscribe, learn more about the list or visit the archives see https://mailman.chrispy.net/postorius/lists/trbhealth.mailman.chrispy.net/

To connect with committee visit: https://trbhealth.org