The role of the health sector

On World Health Day 4^th April, 2004, the World Health Organization called for the health sector to play a stronger role in road safety, in addition to its leading role in injury surveillance and post impact care by:

• Becoming the leading champion for road safety, by advocating for safe road transport systems that reject preventable deaths and serious injuries; supporting the implementation of effective measures; and supporting the efforts of the transport sector to keep speeds within safe levels. There is no shortage of examples, such as in the UK, Sweden, Australia and New Zealand, of how health professionals have acted as passionate and evidence-based advocates to help bring about key measures such as seat belt use and measures to reduce drinking and driving
• Providing evidence-based information: such as injury information systems based on hospital data and facilitating the link and consistency between different data sources; identifying appropriate indicators to monitor various risk factors; and estimating the social costs of road traffic injuries.
• Ensuring that drivers are fit to drive Opportunities to prevent deaths and to mitigate the effects of injuries start with the role of the health sector in ensuring that drivers are fit to drive;
• Delivering post-crash care through a chain of help starting with the possible interventions by bystanders right up to hospital trauma care and rehabilitation;
• Leading research and innovation by improving the evidence based for practice in trauma care and rehabilitation and developing guidelines for implementation;
• Mainstreaming road safety into the policies of public health and other sectors.
• One example of integrating road safety into health policies is reducing health risks related to sedentary lifestyle by implementing strategies for safer walking and cycling. European road safety experts have concluded that by implementing known countermeasures it should be possible to achieve considerable increases in the use of healthier and more environmentally friendly means of transport and still reduce the numbers of deaths and injuries among pedestrians and cyclists. However, further concerted action needs to be taken by policymakers at local, national and international levels to ensure that this positive scenario can be brought about. Recent OECD and EU-funded research projects and reviews such as have identified a range of actions can be undertaken:
• A further practical means of pursuing road injury prevention within health policies and sustainable transport and urban planning is in area-wide safety impact assessment [64, 3] . The impacts of transport or land-use planning decisions on the occurrence of crashes and the resulting injury and damage on the entire road network affected need to be considered at an early stage to avoid adverse and unintended effects on safety. The World Health Organization has recommended that area-wide safety impact assessment should be an essential component of other impact assessments that are carried out routinely in several countries. These include environmental impact assessment, strategic environmental assessment and health impact assessment of plans, policies and projects related to transport and land use [48].

In these ways, road safety can become a central concern in Government policymaking.