Some big changes in 2022 and 2023 have set up the healthcare sector to advance screening for non-medical social needs in 2024 and beyond. This is great news as we work to address social determinants of health (SDoH), improve health outcomes, and reduce health disparities. But one key social need – transportation – isn’t getting the attention it deserves. Transportation is a foundational social need and often co-occurs with other needs and/or acts as a barrier to resolving other needs. Yet transportation is often poorly conceptualized, thus is poorly operationalized in social need screening tools and related justifications. In this post, we review the following big changes as they relate to transportation as a SDOH: Big Change 1: In 2022, the Centers for Medicare ...
Many Americans face transportation barriers that threaten quality of life. When burdened by transportation costs and lack of safe, feasible options, families are forced to make tradeoffs, such as foregoing spending on food and medications or skipping trips to essential destinations such as medical care, the grocery store, workforce development, and other resources, and services. Inadequate transportation not only contributes to inequities in health but also contributes to inequities in social and economic outcomes which exacerbate inequities in health. To reduce inequities and improve overall health, we need both individual-level and community-level strategies to mitigate the symptoms and consequences of inadequate transportation. Let’s use #SaludTues on October 3, 2023, ...
Inadequate transportation can hurt a person’s social, economic, and health outcomes. But planners and policymakers have not had a good tool to measure transportation insecurity—a condition in which one is unable to regularly move from place to place in a safe or timely manner due to the absence of the material, economic, or social resources needed for transportation. So, in 2018, researchers from University of Michigan and others created a tool to explore transportation security modeled after the Food Security Index and based on interviews with families living in poverty. They call it the Transportation Security Index. In 2021, they validated the 16-question index using a nationally representative sample. “We hope [the Transportation Security Index 16] will be adopted ...
More than 25,000 public comments were submitted to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) on proposed changes to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). Our team at Salud America! developed three model comments asking FHWA to adopt a public health and Safe System Approach to reframe and rewrite the 700-page MUTCD, one of transportation engineering’s “bibles” that guides road creation. More than 2,100 people visited our model comments over 30 days and nearly 450 people submitted our model comments. “This enormous volume of comments (a more than ten-fold increase over the last time the MUTCD was updated in 2009) demonstrates the degree to which Americans want change,” according to a post from the National Association of City Transportation Officials ...
What we engineer and build impacts public health, safety, and welfare. However, transportation engineering prioritizes convenience for people driving over safety for people walking or biking. This makes streets more dangerous for everyone, including drivers. Now is our opportunity to change all that. Public comments are wanted on revisions to one of transportation engineering’s “bibles,” the 700-page Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (MUTCD). The MUTCD, which was last rewritten 50 years ago from the point of view of expediting vehicle movement, is full of assumptions, restrictions, and contradictions that hinder efforts to improve safety and create vibrant, welcoming streets. Submit one of three Salud America! model comments to tell ...
Latinos in the U.S. are more likely to not have a vehicle than their white peers, and Latinos in urban areas are more likely to rely on public transit. This is great for the environment and physical health. It’s also a great way to save money. But many cities are car-centric. They lack safe alternatives to driving─ frequent transit, bike lanes, walkable neighborhoods─making it harder and more dangerous for Latinos to get to work, school, and other places. That is why Vision Zero Network is conducting a webinar, “Understanding and Addressing Transportation Equity in Latino Communities in the U.S.,” at 4 p.m. ET Nov. 18, 2020, to share transportation equity solutions from Salud America!’s recent Latino-focused transportation reports. Register for the ...
Latinos face many transportation inequities that impact their ability to build health and wealth. This is due in part to a lack of diversity among decision makers, planners, and engineers and ethnocentric policies, projects, and investments that reinforce the auto-centric status quo. Ultimately, past and present planning practices have failed to be inclusive of Latino needs, failed to represent historic and existing inequities, and failed to responsibly evaluate and measure impacts, targets, and performance. Two new reports from our year-long workgroup of planners and planning scholars provide recommendations to prioritize Latino experiences and needs in the planning process; address inequities and promote racially/economically mixed communities, and modify metrics used to ...
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is celebrating pedestrians by designating October as the first-ever Pedestrian Safety Month and creating a playbook with social media materials to raise awareness. This is good, because pedestrians deserve safety on a road, parking lot, or crosswalk. But it’s not all good. NHTSA is mostly focused on individual pedestrian safety, as opposed to systemic policy changes. This is a form of pedestrian-blaming. By blaming the pedestrian, like in victim-blaming or justifying inequities, Pedestrian Safety Month actually distracts from efforts to address the very transportation systems that endanger pedestrians in the first place. We are excited to see that Transportation for America’s Twitter thread that modified NHTSA ...
Latinos face many transportation inequities. Years of unjust planning practices have cut them off from opportunities for health and wealth. To promote transportation equity for healthier communities, our leaders must ensure that transportation policies and practices are inclusive of Latino needs, address existing disparities, and are responsibly evaluated and measured, according to expert recommendations in two new reports from Salud America! at UT Health San Antonio. The two reports stem from Salud America!’s year-long workgroup of U.S. transportation and planning leaders that explored all aspects of equity in transportation for Latinos, thanks to an Innovation, Equity and Exploration grant from the Voices for Healthy Kids network at the American Heart Association. "These ...
