The Center for Health and Safety Culture has been approved as an official university center by the Montana State University Board of Regents. Professor Nicholas Ward from the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering has been appointed as the Director of the Center.

With this official designation, the Center is pleased to announce the launch of its new website (www.CHSCulture.org). This website includes information about their latest research model for growing positive culture to sustain safe and healthy behaviors in communities.

The new research model to measure, understand, and transform culture is called the Positive Culture Framework (PCF). This framework is grounded in validated models of human social behaviors related to health and safety and considers a broader set of cultural influences in addition to norms. Specifically, the new model has expanded beyond Positive Community Norms to include the most current evidence of cultural factors that influence health and safety behavior.