Road safety and public health: Partnering for advocacy

While road safety has traditionally been viewed as the responsibility of the transport and police sectors, the health sector has an important role to play in road traffic injury prevention through: policy development, advocacy, research, injury surveillance, services, prevention and control, and evaluation. In helping to achieve a goal of strengthening the links between public health and road safety, the Public Health Advocacy Institute WA has developed a road safety advocacy program of work that focuses on establishing partnerships across a range of public health organisations to develop and deliver advocacy in support of road safety.

This paper provides the range of advocacy approaches that have been adopted to place road safety on the public health agenda including:
• establishment of a health advocacy advisory committee to guide and support road safety advocacy strategies
• development of support materials (including website, factsheets) to promote road safety advocacy strategies from a health perspective
• developing an advocacy toolkit to support road safety
• working with the media and key opinion leaders to promote road safety and health agendas.

Road safety is everyone’s business. There are no other agencies in Western Australia who are providing public health advocacy in road safety and this project provides an avenue for road safety to be placed firmly on the public health agenda.