JH-IIRU Team Members Participate in Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety Partner Meeting

On October 20-21, 2015, members of the Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit (JH-IIRU) traveled to London to join Bloomberg Philanthropies for a partner meeting for the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS), a five-year, $125 million effort to reduce injuries and fatalities caused by road traffic accidents 10 ten cities around the world. JH-IIRU will conduct direct observations of road safety activities – helmet and seatbelt wearing, speeding and drinking and driving – during the course of the project.

After a welcome and introduction by Kelly Henning and Kelly Larson from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the group discussed highlights of the first few months of the program before moving on to talk about priority-setting and opportunities.

During this time, JH-IIRU team members, including director, Adnan Hyder, associate directors, Abdul Bachani and Kent Stevens, and assistant scientists, Qingfeng Li, Shivam Gupta, Katharine Allen and Connie Hoe presented updates on the unit’s work in the target cities. To date, JH-IIRU has data collection either completed or in-progress in all 10 target cities. The unit’s next steps will include completing baseline data collection and analysis for all 10 cities; disseminating results to partners; preparing for the second round of data collection; and beginning secondary data analysis.

Collaborators from the World Health Organization (WHO) discussed findings from the recently- released  Global Status Report for Road Safety 2015, (WHO), a BIGRS collaborating partner, was discussed, as well as updates from the legislative component of the project.

The two-day meeting concluded with a session focused on strategy and next steps for the project, led by Union North America, another collaborating partner.

To find out more about JH-IIRU’s road safety work, click here and here.