Megan & Eloisa,
In preparing a DOT presentation on Transportation and Health at a panel about social
determinants of health and health disparities at NIH for Nation Minority Health Month, I
sketched an outline that I think could be informative to planning next year:
Transportation's impact on health
* Transportation availability & access to care
* Transportation options & livable communities
* Transportation planning & environmental justice
As I mentioned back at the annual meeting, there is nowhere near enough research being
done on bullet #1, while nos 2&3 get covered by a lot of disciplines. This
subcommittee can help fill that gap. There is a need to look not only at
"transportation decisions" which imply planning of projects & future
impacts, but transportation use and availability and their impact on individual health
outcomes. Arguably, transportation has a much larger impact on health when considered in
the immediate term and on an individual scale.
To use two specific examples: certainly planning decisions can have large future aggregate
impacts on air quality and respiratory health as a result - but how many people in the
past year have ended up in emergency care, or, sadly, died because they were unable to get
to a preventive appointment like dialysis or other chronic disease treatment? That's
a much more immediate and measurable impact, yet no one can really say for sure.
That's where, in my opinion, this committee has the biggest opportunity to
contribute.
I think TCRP made a good foray into this area with B-27 "Cost Benefit Analysis of
Providing Non-Emergency Medical
Transportation,"<http://www.trb.org/Main/Public/Blurbs/156625.aspx&… but this
was really only a beginning, and happened 7 years ago now.
I would argue that the Public Health sector is pretty strongly engaged in the
transportation discussion and it's time now to engage more people in the Health Care
& Services sectors. In the long term, I think, that engagement will have benefits for
all of the other questions the subcommittee considers. As hospitals, insurance companies,
and other care providers better understand the direct impact of transportation on their
missions and their bottom lines, the more they will support transportation options and
better transportation planning. I mean how many hospitals are built today to enable,
much less encourage, walking to and from? I sure haven't seen one recently. To what
extent to providers consider transportation access (beyond driving & parking garages)
when placing and planning new facilities? These are all very important issues which are
not being researched.
I hope you will consider this broadening of scope for next year's workshop.
-Erik
Erik Weber
United We Ride -- Office of Program Management
Federal Transit Administration
U.S. Department of Transportation
1200 New Jersey Ave, SE, E44-431
Washington, DC 20590
Ph: 202.366.0705
On the Web:
www.unitedweride.gov<http://www.unitedweride.gov/>
Follow the United We Ride National Resource Center:
@NRCtrans<http://twitter.com/NRCtrans>
www.fta.dot.gov<http://www.fta.dot.gov/>
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@FTA_DOT<http://twitter.com/FTA_DOT>
P Please consider the environment before printing this email.
-----Original Message-----
From: h+t--friends-bounces(a)chrispy.net [mailto:h+t--friends-bounces@chrispy.net] On Behalf
Of Megan Wier
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 7:28 PM
To: h+t--friends(a)ryoko.chrispy.net
Subject: [H+T--Friends] Help inform our Subcommittee's TRB 2013 Workshop Proposal!
Help inform our Subcommittee's TRB 2013 Workshop Proposal!
The Health & Transportation Subcommittee is proposing a half-day workshop for the
January 2013 TRB Annual Meeting - and we are looking to our friends for help generating
ideas regarding its focus.
As many of you know, at the 2012 TRB Annual Meeting there was a full-day workshop entitled
"Intersection of Health and Transportation: What We Know, What We Don't Know, and
How We Can Better Integrate Health Considerations into Transportation Decisions."
More information regarding this workshop is available at the following link:
http://pressamp.trb.org/conferenceinteractiveprogram/EventDetails.aspx?ID=2…
.
The workshop was a great success - and generated a lot of ideas regarding research needs
at the intersection of health and transportation - many of which are summarized here:
http://www.trbhealth.org/research/research-needs.
Examples include:
- Effects of travel and travel environments on social cohesion
- Parking policy as a mechanism for increasing physical activity
- Access needs of different populations
- Road safety disparities
- Health effects of new and improved infrastructure networks for active transportation
modes (e.g., bike ways, sidewalks, trails)
- Local impacts of freight movement
- Health-related indicators in transportation planning
- Creating partnerships between transportation and other health-related sectors
As the Subcommittee moves forward with its work, what topics (listed at the above link -
OR new ideas that you may have) do you think warrant a deeper exploration and discussion
at the upcoming meeting? Are there particular areas or speakers that you think would help
the subcommittee to advance research, education, and professional practice in health and
transportation?
***Please email Eloisa Raynault
(eloisa.raynault@apha.org<mailto:eloisa.raynault@apha.org>) and Megan Wier
(megan.wier@sfdph.org<mailto:megan.wier@sfdph.org>) with your thoughts and ideas by
Friday, May 4th,
2012.***
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