Johns Hopkins International injury Research Unit Invites Collaborators to Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety Meeting

From December 6-8, 2017, the Johns Hopkins International Injury Research Unit (JH-IIRU) hosted its collaborators from the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS) for two full days of presentations, group discussions, and training sessions.

At the meeting, JH-IIRU faculty and staff convened alongside BIGRS collaborators from eight different cities: Fortaleza and Sao Paulo, Brazil, Bogota, Colombia, Bandung, Indonesia, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Accra, Ghana, Mumbai, India.

On Wednesday morning, JH-IIRU director Dr. Adnan Hyder welcomed the international guests before providing an overview of the BIGRS project, reviewing the meeting’s goals and objectives, and providing an overview of the monitoring and evaluating of the project—part of a five-year, $125 million effort to reduce the burden of global road traffic injuries and fatalities.

“It was so exciting to welcome such diverse collaborators to our first joint meeting,” said Dr. Hyder. “The opportunity to work together this week has already proven to be invaluable as we work to strengthen data collection on key road safety risk factors.”

 “This has been a good opportunity to share experience from each country and city working on [the BIGRS] project,” said Gabriel Andreuccetti, of the University of Sao Paulo in Sao Paulo, Brazil. “More than that, this meeting will allow us to go beyond the sessions in order to learn from our collaborators and see how they relate to research challenges.”

The meeting included in-depth sessions led by the JH-IIRU team including electronic data collection, data use and dissemination, training and capacity development and new challenges.

“It’s great to see all the collaborators in person and learn about everyone’s experiences,” said PP Vedagiri, of IIT Bombay in Mumbai, India. “These lessons will be very useful for the remaining time here in Baltimore and beyond.”