Require Research and Surveillance

Data and evaluation are critical to ensure robust information on the impact of transportation systems on health as well as to determine whether interventions have their intended effect.

Recommendations

• Support national, state, and local research to better understand the relationships between transportation, health, and safety outcomes.
• In coordination with federal and state transportation agencies, CDC could provide expertise in evaluating programs and activities designed to address the safety and health issues related to transportation. For example, CDC could evaluate:
  • Effectiveness of laws, policies, and programs.
  • Fidelity of program implementation.
  • Enforcement of transportation policies to improve health and safety outcomes.
• Support public health data collection and analysis activities for active transportation and public transportation. Examples include:
  • Improved specificity of external cause-of-injury codes for transportation-related deaths, hospitalizations, and emergency department visits to capture information on traffic-relatedness, vehicle type, and occupant status.
  • Comprehensive counts of deaths and improved data estimates of injuries related to all modes of transportation, including pedestrians and bicyclists.
  • Systematic counts of users of all modes of transportation, including pedestrians and bicyclists.
  • Targeted community level data to track the impact of policies, programs, and services.
  • Enhance travel demand modeling capability to reflect all modes of transportation.
• Assess the overall traveler health and safety impact of transportation migration (e.g., mode shift), of individuals switching from one form of transportation to another form, and of changing the mix in traffic.
• Encourage the inclusion of health- and safety-related questions in transportation surveys.