A Course on Motor Vehicle Trauma: Instructor’s Guide–Final/Users Manual

Holden, Janet A.; Christoffel, Tom. · 1986 · ROSA P / United States. Dept. of Transportation. University Research Program

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Summary

This document presents the final report and instructor’s guide for a comprehensive survey course on motor vehicle injury and death, developed at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. The project was motivated by the recognition that motor vehicle crashes constitute a major public health problem—causing nearly 45,000 deaths annually in the United States—yet health professional curricula largely lacked dedicated instruction on this topic. The authors aimed to address this gap by creating a practical model course to encourage other schools of public health to integrate motor vehicle trauma prevention into their programs. The overarching goal was to train students to view highway safety through a public health lens, utilizing multidisciplinary approaches and proven preventative techniques to mitigate injury and death. The course was designed for post-baccalaureate students with diverse backgrounds, including medicine, engineering, and psychology. The curriculum was developed, implemented, and evaluated between 1983 and 1985 under a U.S. Department of Transportation contract. The instructional design deliberately reversed the traditional pre-crash, crash, and post-crash sequence. Instead, the course began with post-crash outcomes and epidemiology to establish the magnitude of the problem, followed by crash dynamics and biomechanics, and concluded with pre-crash factors such as roadway design, driver behavior, and legal policies. This sequencing was chosen to provide a familiar medical context for public health students before introducing engineering and policy concepts. The guide includes specific learning objectives, suggested readings, an annotated film list, and practical guidelines for implementation, such as field trips to rehabilitation hospitals and drunk driving courts. The resulting instructor’s guide serves as a framework rather than a scripted text, requiring instructors to possess basic knowledge of injury control or public health. It covers nine topic areas, including epidemiology, occupant protection, alcohol impairment, and federal policy. The development process involved review by 45 injury professionals from seven fields and subsequent review by faculty at 13 schools of public health. The guide provides resources for slide creation, sample examinations, and a network of resource persons. The authors emphasize that while the specific funding and guest speakers from the initial University of Illinois offering were unique, the necessary resources for such a course exist virtually everywhere. The second iteration of the course at the university, conducted without federal funding, yielded arguably more favorable results, demonstrating the viability of the model. The significance of this work lies in its attempt to bridge the disconnect between public health professionals and highway safety experts. By framing motor vehicle trauma as a preventable public health issue rather than merely a traffic engineering or legal concern, the course aims to produce graduates who champion road safety as a high priority. The document concludes that health professionals are essential for reducing motor vehicle-related injury and death, and that systematic education in this area is crucial for implementing effective preventive measures. The guide is intended to provide encouragement and a structural pattern for institutions seeking to develop similar courses, thereby fostering a broader professional commitment to injury prevention.

Key finding

The guide provides a structured framework and practical model for developing and implementing a multidisciplinary motor vehicle trauma course within public health schools to enhance student engagement in injury prevention.

Methodology

other

Provenance

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Topics

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• incidence prevalence
• demographic disparities
• fatality injury trends
• comparative international
• regulatory evaluation
• naturalistic crash near crash

Information type

What kind of knowledge this paper contributes, grouped by family — independent of topic (what it is about) and method (how it was studied).

• Empirical Findings: crash risk outcomes, observational prevalence
• Methodological Resource: dataset resource