Focus Area: Safety Culture
CHSC Announces March Webinar
The Center for Health and Safety Culture (CHSC) has announced a new webinar for March, entitled “The Center for Health and Safety Culture: Who We Are and How We Support Efforts to Improve Health and Safety.” This free event will be presented on Wednesday, March 18, 2020 from 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm (Mountain Time)
This webinar will introduce CHSC and its staff, the Positive Culture Framework for improving health and safety, and the many services offered to support communities and organizations in their efforts to transform culture. The Center uses the latest science to address complex social issues to improve health and safety in a sustainable way and can help organizations and communities reach their health and safety goals. For more information or to register in advance, visit the CHSC webinar webpage.
WEBINAR: Traffic Safety Culture and Its Relationship to Vision Zero
The Center for Health and Safety Culture, in partnership with the Traffic Safety Culture Pooled Fund, will lead a free webinar on December 3 on “Traffic Safety Culture and Its Relationship to Vision Zero.” The webinar will provide an overview of traffic safety culture theory, terminology, and methods, based on the newly published TSC Primer. For more information and to register, visit the CHSC Upcoming Webinars page.
Transportation Research Board Promotes New CHSC Publications
Two new traffic safety culture publications, drafted by Center for Health and Safety Culture (CHSC) researchers for the Montana Department of Transportation (MDT), have been featured in the last two national newsletters of the National Academies of Sciences Transportation Research Board (TRB).
Kari Finley, Jay Otto, Nic Ward and Jamie Arpin authored “Proactive Traffic Safety: Empowering Behaviors to Reach Our Shared Vision of Zero Deaths and Serious Injuries,” a primer that defines proactive traffic safety and offers strategies and examples of how agencies can integrate it into their own safety programs and initiatives. This resource includes specific tips and communication tools for working with stakeholders and conducting public education events.
Finley, Otto, and Ward also developed the “Traffic Safety Culture Primer,” which introduces the concept of traffic safety culture and how it influences road user behavior. It provides examples of how growing a positive traffic safety culture can be used to enhance safe behaviors around issues such as impaired driving and seat belt use within an organization or at the community level.
CHSC created both primers as part of the Traffic Safety Culture Pooled Fund program, for which MDT serves as the lead agency. The primers and additional resources are available on the Proactive Traffic Safety webpage and the Traffic Safety Culture Primer webpage of the MDT website.
Newspaper Lauds Parenting Website
ParentingMontana.org continues to receive great reviews. In a recent editorial, Karen Sullivan of the Montana Standard called the website “one of the best resources on parenting I’ve run across, and Montana parents are lucky to have it.”
ParentingMontana.org features practical tools for parents with kids ranging from age five to age nineteen, covering challenging topics such as anger, bullying, chores, homework, peer pressure, and underage drinking. The Center for Health and Safety Culture (CHSC) developed the project in cooperation with the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS).
The website also offers access to a repository of videos, radio and print materials, as well as contact information for assistance resources in Montana, such as prevention specialists, treatment services, and a crisis text line. In her editorial, Sullivan concludes that ParentingMontana.org “is an incredible free resource that might just make the parenting journey a little easier.”
CHSC Announces Summer Webinars
The Center for Health and Safety Culture will host webinars in July and August, based on two of their research and community outreach projects:
Exploring Law Enforcement Attitudes and Beliefs About Traffic Safety Enforcement
July 8, 2019 from 1–2pm MDT
This webinar will summarize the results of a recent project to better understand how the culture within law enforcement agencies impacts engagement in traffic safety enforcement. The project is sponsored by the Traffic Safety Culture Pooled Fund Program hosted by the Montana Department of Transportation.
Reducing Problem Gambling in Oregon
Aug 27, 2019 from 10am – 11am MDT
This webinar will showcase a partnership between the Center for Health and Safety Culture and the Oregon Health Authority that focused on reducing problem gambling throughout Oregon. Join this webinar to hear how this partnership formed, view the tools that were developed, and learn how they’re being used today to reduce problem gambling across the state.
To learn more about and register for both webinars, visit the CHSC webinar page.
Where in the World is WTI? EU Safety Conference Invites CHSC Director to Luxembourg
Center for Health and Safety Culture (CHSC) Director, Dr. Nic Ward, will be a keynote speaker at the EU Safety Conference in Luxembourg in October 2019. Dr. Ward’s presentation is titled, “Safety Culture: Creating a Sense of Responsibility for Safety in the Population at Large.” The Conference, organized by EuroSafe and the Luxembourg Institute of Health, will cover a wide range of topics related to injury prevention and safety promotion, such as road safety and safety at work. There will be opportunities for cross-cutting communications between sectors and disciplines to address issues such as: translating research into practice and policy, injury related socio-economic inequities, ageing societies, technological developments, social marketing, alcohol, fatigue, and distraction. More information about this international conference is available at the EU Safety 2019 website.
Webinar will Showcase Research on Law Enforcement Agency Culture
The Montana Department of Transportation (MDT) will host a webinar featuring research by a team from the Center for Health and Safety Culture. MDT recently released the final report for “Understanding Law Enforcement Attitudes and Beliefs about Traffic Safety,” which aimed to understand how the culture within law enforcement agencies impacts engagement in traffic safety enforcement. CHSC researchers, including Jay Otto, Kari Finley, Kelly Green, and Nic Ward, led the research on behalf of the Traffic Safety Culture Pooled Fund program. The team conducted surveys and interviews with 19 law enforcement agencies in four states to collect data for the assessment.
The webinar, which will provide an overview of the research results, will be held on Monday, July 8. Learn more and sign-up at the registration website. The final research report and a project summary report are available on the MDT project webpage.
CHSC Releases Training Videos for Health and Safety Professionals
The Center for Health and Safety Culture (CHSC) has released online resources called “Brief Spotlight Videos,” which address key topics on a variety of critical public health and safety issues. The videos provide practical tips and ideas for practitioners who address these issues on a daily basis.
The Spotlights include:
- Applying Motivational Interviewing to Advocate for the Positive
- Meetings 101
- Medication Assisted Treatment
- Networks and Buy-Ins
- Adverse Childhood Experiences
- Stigma Training Series (six videos)
The Spotlights can be viewed at https://chsculture.org/trainings/brief-spotlight-videos/.
MSU News Highlights New Book on Traffic Safety Culture
Thank you, Montana State University News, for your feature article on the new Traffic Safety Culture book. MSU News interviewed CHSC Director Nic Ward for “MSU Researcher Co-authors Book on New Approach to Traffic Safety,” which was featured on the MSU News website. “It’s a new way of looking at an old problem,” said Ward; “Traffic safety has traditionally looked at engineering, enforcement and education as a way to make drivers behave safely. Because most crashes are the result of driver behavior, it is imperative to understand how culture influences driver behavior.”
Traffic Safety Culture: Definition, Foundation, and Application includes major contributions by the staff of the Center for Health and Safety Culture. CHSC Director Nic Ward was one of the three book editors and co-authored several chapters. Center staff and affiliated Montana State University faculty who also co-authored book chapters include Jay Otto, Kari Finley, Kelly Green, Eric Austin, and William Schell. (Legal disclaimer: Editors receive a royalty payment from the publisher.)