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APPENDIX G -
Blue Ribbon Panel Recommendations
Recommendation l Increase dramatically the availability and accessibility of safety education, training, expertise, knowledge, special skills, credible research and information about health and traffic safety issues to African Americans and other ethnic minority populations.
Recommendation 2 Increase dramatically the credibility, visibility and attention focused on the issue of seat belt use among African Americans, with particular emphasis on young African America males, through the expression of credible, positive, culturally infused health and safety values in media messages and literature distributed to all segments of the African American community.
Recommendation 3 Increase and reinforce awareness in youth and educators of the nation's youth about health and traffic safety at the earliest possible age, and incorporate health and traffic safety into the educational curriculum for grades pre K through 12.
Recommendation 4 Create a program of research and evaluation that focuses on specific urban and rural African American populations with initiatives that include effective safety education, training, technical assistance and outreach programs. Such programs would seek to designate principal investigators and other leadership from Historically Black Colleges and Universities in a manner modeled by Meharry Medical College's work documented in the 1999 publication, "Achieving a Credible Health and Safety Approach to Increasing Seat Belt Use Among African Americans."
Recommendation 5 Improve cooperation between African American communities and public safety and health officers, and provide enhanced community policing, training, management, staffing, technology and support in order to eliminate rogue behaviors in the enforcement of seat belt laws.
Recommendation 6 State agencies and legislatures should be provided a clear, uniform guide for structuring and enacting comprehensive seat belt laws, including the best elements of laws already enacted, and provisions, policies and procedures for the collection, compilation and analysis of data on traffic stops, particularly in conjunction with incidents of rogue behavior by law enforcement officials.
Recommendation 7 Create and distribute, through collaborative relationships, a credible and culturally infused comprehensive program of facts, safety education materials and examples of seat belt safety for use by community-based service and other organizations including churches, civil rights and volunteer organizations, schools, educators, parents and students.
Recommendation 8 Establish a program nation-wide that boldly and broadly disseminates, in a culturally infused manner, child safety seats and credible information about child safety seat use, correct child safety seat installation, and for credible and culturally infused child safety seat technician training.
Recommendation 9 Link insurers and the insured in cooperative incentive programs, partnerships and alliances that encourage and reward positive seat belt and child safety seat use.
Recommendation 10 A comprehensive coordinated strategy of education, communication, and training regarding seat belt use and child safety seat installation and use should be developed and implemented for all new and used car dealers to implement for all of their customers, with particular emphasis on African American customers.
Strategy Recommendations
To save lives and reduce injuries through an Increase in Seat Belt Use Among African Americans
A. EDUCATION.TRAINING AND COMMUNICATIONS
Recommendation l Increase dramatically the availability and accessibility of safety education, training, expertise, knowledge, special skills, credible research and information about health and traffic safety issues to African Americans and other ethnic minority populations.
Discussion
Issues:
- At present, the gathering of data about traffic safety issues pertinent to the African American community is uncoordinated and cannot be easily accessed either by knowledgeable and concerned parties, or by resource challenged neighborhoods, cities and/or other local organizations and individuals wishing to initiate and enhance their health and safety improvement efforts.
- There does not seem to be an effective and efficient coordination among the federal government's traffic safety and health initiatives that are pertinent to African Americans, i.e. including, but not limited to, seat belt use, child safety belt use, driving while black or brown etc. This deficiency results in an inability of the average local organization, school, local government officials, and others to access comprehensive and practical information.
- There is no central source of public information, action plans, expertise, contact lists and options, and data that is readily and easily accessible to and about African American organizations and individuals and health and safety matters.
- There are a handful of viable, credible examples of African American organizations and individuals adopting the seat belt and child safety seat challenge. The product of these efforts is not being referenced or broadly shared, nor are the acquired skills being transferred, leveraged or translated to be linguistically appropriate. The African American community shares a common perception that such efforts are being ignored.
Suggestions for Implementation:
- The four historically black medical colleges (Morehouse Medical College, Charles Drew Medical College, Howard University Medical College and Meharry Medical College), African American advocacy, civil rights and volunteer organizations, churches, schools, health care providers, parents and student organizations, youth groups, media and professional organizations, and local and national government agencies should be actively recruited to be incubators of health and safety leadership.
- An inter-agency secretariat can be designated to coordinate African American traffic safety issues within the federal government, and, in particular, within the United States Department of Transportation.
- Congressional legislation with appropriations and an executive order from the President may be appropriate to ensure implementation.
B. HEALTH & SAFETY
Recommendation 2 Increase dramatically the credibility, visibility and attention focused on the issue of seat belt use among African Americans, with particular emphasis on young African America males, through the expression of credible, positive, culturally infused health and safety values in media messages and literature distributed to all segments of the African American community.
Discussion
Issues:
- The absence of credible positive messages contributes to the prevalent "don't control me" and other self-destructive behaviors and attitudes of teenagers and young adults.
- Media messages often convey distorted and self-destructive values and images of African American males, particularly young African American males, which inhibit the potential success of positive messages about African American health and safety, and undermine positive personal health and safety behavior.
Suggestions for Implementation:
- In all communications, present a credible, recognizable and positive image of African American motorists working together and being primarily responsible for their own and others health and safety.
- Create a positive, productive health and safety image and presence in the media that is acknowledged, understood and identified with by young adults, youth and children.
- Create a positive reference for young African American males among law enforcement officials in order to eliminate "Driving While Black or Brown" incidents.
- Emphasize in communications the special needs of youth, unemployed, and under-served population.
- Create a national media task force to encourage youth to get involved, particularly with local initiatives, to increase seat belt use and to provide funding and other resources to encourage, nurture, support and sustain this effort.
Recommendation 3 Increase and reinforce awareness in youth and educators of the nation's youth about health and traffic safety at the earliest possible age, and incorporate health and traffic safety into the educational curriculum for grades pre K through 12.
Discussion
Issues:
There is a lack of consistent, positive reinforcement of strong health and traffic safety messages in culturally infused and credible terms throughout the entire education experience: early childhood pre-school preparation, elementary and secondary, higher education including advanced degree and post advanced degree programs. This is especially true for schools in urban and economically-challenged areas, which suffer from limited resources and where:
- African American and other ethnic American children and parents are a disproportionate share of the early childhood
pre-school, elementary and secondary education school population.
- Education efforts directed at children are not credibly and consistently sustained and reinforced through both traditional and nontraditional message channels, including, entertainment and recreational industries; outdoor and other advertising; amusement parks, mascots, story books, cartoons, interactive driving simulation computer programs/games, screen savers, videotapes, health care/public safety professional on-site visits, sports and sports figures, music artists and music forms, other celebrities; and competitions, driver education points, scholarships, youth support programs, sports.
- Youth peer pressure should be harnessed to convey and reinforce positive messages of personal responsibility about health and traffic safety before youth begin to drive.
- Health and safety education efforts are marginalized because of a pervasive lack of access to preventive care and instruction and the necessary resources to enable implementation.
Suggestions for Implementation:
- Health care providers, educators, fire, emergency, law enforcement and safety officials, civil rights, religious and professional organizations, advocacy groups, grandparents, student groups, schools, and federal, state and local agencies can get involved to support a comprehensive and collaborative health and safety youth education initiative. In particular, the resources, expertise and authority of the United States Departments of Education, Health and Human Services and Transportation are needed to provide leadership.
C. RESEARCH AND EVALUATION
Recommendation 4 Create a program of research and evaluation that focuses on specific urban and rural African American populations with initiatives that include effective safety education, training, technical assistance and outreach programs. Such programs would seek to designate principal investigators and other leadership from Historically Black Colleges and Universities in a manner modeled by Meharry Medical College's work documented in the 1999 publication, "Achieving a Credible Health and Safety Approach to Increasing Seat Belt Use Among African Americans."
Discussion
Issues:
- Data coordination appears to be non-existent between the few existing separate African American health and traffic safety initiatives.
- Each new inquiry and outreach effort necessitates reinventing the wheel with no appreciable increase in efficiency or benefit.
- Key questions have not been researched and are unanswered such as: 1. What are the underlining factors and interrelationships that contribute to African Americans not wearing seat belts? 2. What is the impact of primary seat belt laws upon the African American Community?, 3. What is the full impact of child education about seat belt safety on efforts?
- The absence of reliable and consistent Focus Group input.
- The absence of credible African American clinical and other research input diminishes the credibility of all efforts.
- The absence of a central repository of data and information on health and traffic safety issues as they impact seat belt use and African Americans.
- Current efforts to gather, organize and provide such data by multiple federal agencies and other organizations are well-intentioned, but are too limited by budget priority, lack of credible cultural infusion and other factors to have both significant and sustained impact.
- There is an ocean of opportunity to leverage even the existing scarce research about African American seat belt and child safety seat use across other ethnic populations, with linguistically appropriate resources, and to correct a common misperception that the African American community is somehow separate and apart from the American Family as a whole.
Suggestions for Implementation:
- Provide answers to formidable questions prior to the issuance of new or revised policies.
- Compile a credible, actionable body of culturally infused health and safety behavior-related knowledge.
- Assure the transfer of all statistics, reporting and data to a common information repository located at Meharry Medical College.
- Establish multidisciplinary research protocol.
- Link the repository located at Meharry Medical College to credible culturally infused community-based and other organizations.
D. IMPROVING COMPLIANCE WITH SEAT BELT LAWS
Recommendation 5 Improve cooperation between African American communities and public safety and health officers, and provide enhanced community policing, training, management, staffing, technology and support in order to eliminate rogue behaviors in the enforcement of seat belt laws.
Discussion
Issues:
- Racial profiling or "Driving While Black or Brown" incidents damage the public trust necessary to enable public safety officials to succeed in saving lives and reducing injury, through influencing youth, young parents and others to comply with seat belt laws.
- Polarized attitudes and hostile law enforcement behaviors impede the adoption of primary seat belt laws and the use of seat belts.
- Public safety and law enforcement professionals are burdened by the stress of their professional responsibilities, while having little sense of support from the total community.
- African American and other ethnic American communities are extremely distrustful of providing law enforcement officials with more laws that have the appearance of providing legal excuses for rogue behaviors and practices, such as racial profiling.
Suggestions for Implementation:
- Training and management of law enforcement officials should focus on changing attitudes through cultural education and community policing initiatives, and re-establishing trust by increasing dialogue and mutual respect.
- Support for training of public safety and law enforcement officials should include: upgraded community policing and law enforcement techniques; community support efforts; more routine training and education, and management preparation and education.
- National public safety groups, law enforcement professional organizations, national health care provider groups, national advocacy groups, state, federal and local government agencies, can provide leadership in the effort to eliminate rogue behavior by law enforcement officials. Denial of federal funds to law enforcement and other agencies presenting a practice and pattern of rogue behavior is a sanction worth evaluating. In particular, the authority, resources and expertise of the United States Departments of Justice and Treasury are needed to provide leadership.
Recommendation 6 State agencies and legislatures should be provided a clear, uniform guide for structuring and enacting comprehensive seat belt laws, including the best elements of laws already enacted, and provisions, policies and procedures for the collection, compilation and analysis of data on traffic stops, particularly in conjunction with incidents of rogue behavior by law enforcement officials.
Discussion
Issues:
- The perception that additional primary seat belt laws will be neither comprehensive nor fair in their enforcement in light of the current incidence of "racial profiling" experiences.
- The failure to implement provisions for the collection of local, county and state traffic stop data.
- The perception that legitimate concerns about "Driving while Black or Brown" have been brushed aside by the majority population helps to engender opposition to primary seat belt laws.
Suggestions for Implementation:
- Provide assistance and increase incentives to state legislatures interested in passing primary seat belt laws through a consistent and regularly updated nation-wide review of proposed legislation, with recommendations that are based on fair and equitable existing laws.
- Actively seek the contribution and participation of local and national public safety groups, civil rights, religious, educational, student and professional organizations, health care providers, national advocacy groups and government agencies, among others in the framing of solutions aimed at eliminating the perceptions that the enacted primary seat belt laws will increase the propensity for police to abuse the law, resulting in increased racial profiling incidents. In particular, the authority, resources and expertise of the United States Departments of Justice and Transportation are needed to provide leadership.
E. PROGRAMS THAT SUPPORT COMMUNITY-BASED PARTNERSHIPS
Recommendation 7 Create and distribute, through collaborative relationships, a credible and culturally infused comprehensive program of facts, safety education materials and examples of seat belt safety for use by community-based service and other organizations including churches, civil rights and volunteer organizations, schools, educators, parents and students.
Discussion
Issues:
- Greater community appreciation for seat belt use policies and laws is lagging because of the unavailability of consistent, sustainable programs for education and program implementation.
- Credible information and usable programs on seat belt use are not now reaching those community, civil rights, volunteer, church, school and professional organizations, among others, that could create and communicate culturally infused values, images and messages about seat belt use.
- The public's awareness of the accomplishments and contributions of African Americans to the process of increasing seat belt use in local communities is deeply flawed.
Suggestions for Implementation:
- Local and national advocacy groups for African Americans and other ethnic minorities, civil rights, religious, educational, student, volunteer and professional organizations, and local, state and federal agencies can contribute to the establishment and support of sustainable community-based partnerships. In particular, the authority, resources and expertise of the United States Departments of Transportation, Health and Human Services, Treasury, Education and Justice are needed to provide leadership in fostering strategies to achieve the potential of the opportunities.
- Education programs that are distributed should share African American success stories, materials and contacts.
Recommendation 8 Establish a program nation-wide that boldly and broadly disseminates, in a culturally infused manner, child safety seats and credible information about child safety seat use, correct child safety seat installation, and for credible and culturally infused child safety seat technician training.
Discussion
Issues:
- The lack of access to affordable child safety seats and credible, culturally infused and accessible communications regarding programs created to provide information and instruction about correct child safety seat use and installation has created a high level of frustration and disappointment among national and local African American leadership and community-based organizations.
- Intermediary non-government organizations currently involved in this issue, no matter how well-intended, are often perceived as lacking credibility, difficult to work with and ineffective by African American community-based organizations and leadership.
Suggestions for Implementation:
- Diffuse the dependency on large, non-urban-based, non-government organizations through primary, direct, collaborative, culturally infused and credible linkages with national and local African American and other ethnic American non-government organizations, civil rights, religious, educational, student, volunteer, professional and advocacy groups and academic institutions, among others.
- Enhance credibility, sensitivity and outreach efforts on the issues related to child safety seat use by communicating and working directly with African American and other ethnic American organizations and individuals.
- Local and national advocacy groups, civil rights, religious, educational, student, volunteer and professional organizations, safety organizations and federal agencies must be enlisted to provide leadership on providing access to affordable child safety seats, information, installation and training. In particular, the United States Departments of Transportation, Health and Human Services, Education, Justice, the General Services Administration and the General Accounting Office can provide leadership in prioritizing the establishment of credible culturally infused community-based partnerships and coalitions.
Recommendation 9 Link insurers and the insured in cooperative incentive programs, partnerships and alliances that encourage and reward positive seat belt and child safety seat use.
Discussion
Issues:
- Insurance companies have a vested interest in increasing use of seat belts and child safety seats, but they seem to be invisible or on the sidelines in urban communities.
- While insurance companies are concerned about health and traffic safety, a common perception exists in the African American community that despite individual companies undertaking separate safety education programs, the industry is not a full participant in generating and resourcing, with transparency, credible and culturally infused preventive programs.
Suggestions for Implementation:
- Encourage insurance companies to provide financial and other incentive rewards for achieving and maintaining seat belt and child safety seat use, along with a program of non-police related monitoring of use.
- Encourage insurance companies to work with the insured motorist in providing education on health and motor vehicle safety.
- Encourage insurance companies to provide financial rewards in claims resulting from motor vehicle crashes in which vehicle occupants were using seat belts.
- Insurance companies and brokers, automobile companies, auto safety equipment manufacturers, auto dealerships, auto parts retailers, state insurance boards, elected and appointed public officials, schools, parents, national advocacy groups and others can provide leadership in urging the insurance industry to significantly increase its participation as a stakeholder.
Recommendation 10 A comprehensive coordinated strategy of education, communication, and training regarding seat belt use and child safety seat installation and use should be developed and implemented for all new and used car dealers to implement for all of their customers, with particular emphasis on African American customers.
Discussion
Issues:
- Although automotive manufacturers, suppliers and dealers have a clear health and safety interest in increasing the use of seat belts and child safety seats, their commitment to reducing risks in this area rarely is communicated in a clear, consistent, culturally infused and credible manner to African American and other urban-based ethnic communities.
- There is a common perception in the African American community that while individual automobile companies initiate health and safety education and training programs, the industry, as a whole, treats African Americans with intolerance and clear disdain. This behavior from cells within the industry limits effective and credible communications on seat belt and child safety seat use.
Suggestions for Implementation:
- Encourage and provide incentives to new and used car dealers who communicate and provide education in health and safety in seat belt and child safety seat use.
- Implement measures to require used car dealers to participate in local and national child safety seat and seat belt use health and safety educational and training initiatives because they sell a disproportionate number of cars to African American and other ethnic American customers.
- Automobile companies, suppliers, safety equipment manufacturers, used and new car dealers, advocacy groups, the insurance industry, local and national government agencies can provide leadership on seeking maximum seat belt use through the strategic participation of new and used car dealers. In particular, the authority, resources and expertise of the United States Department of Transportation, United States Department of Justice and United States Department of Commerce are needed to provide leadership.
Summary Conclusion
It is the Panel's position that, because seat belt use for African Americans is an urgent public health crisis, nothing should prevent America from reaching its goal of saving lives and reducing injuries through the increased use of seat belts and child safety seats. The crisis compels immediate strategic action.
The Panel has determined that the seat belt use issue is not and cannot be readily separated from the other health disparity and at-risk behaviors in the African American community; nor can seat belt use be detached from the context of historical issues of credibility and fairness that African Americans have suffered for centuries. Low seat belt use is a vast opportunity fraught with complexity, which involves enormous consequences for safety, health and justice in the African American community. Enormous resources, incentives and positive reinforcement are required.
The prospect of losing even one more life where seat belt or child safety seat use could have made a difference underscores the urgency of this crisis. The pain, agony and sense of loss that we all feel are reflected in the words of Blue Ribbon Panel member Reverend Wendell Anthony, Senior Minister, Fellowship Chapel and President, Detroit Chapter, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People:
"Babies are dying and mothers are crying.
The African American community suffers a great deal because there is a lack of utilizing car seats and seat belts in general."
Therefore, the strategies described herein are collaborative and applicable to other ethnic American populations.
The Panel recommends that there be active monitoring of significant events coupled with a semi-annual assessment or measurement of the progress made in implementing all recommendations.
The Panel recognizes the Congressional Black Caucus' position on issues of equity, efficacy and transparency in the "fair share" allocation of federal governmental and non-governmental funds to address seat belt safety, between African American institutions, other ethic entities, and "mainstream" entities. Similarly, for historical accuracy and guidance, the panel recommends a review and report of how these types of funds have been distributed over the past five years and the plans for the allocation of these and similar funds for the years to come. Observing trends and patterns contributes to our nation's capacity to anticipate problems and adjust and to prepare better solutions to them.
The members of the Blue Ribbon Panel would like to thank its Co-Chairs for facilitating the opportunity to work on this critical task, and we hope that we have served our communities and our nation well in fulfilling the mandate handed to us.
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