Hidden health costs of transportation policy: saving lives and dollars

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to a briefing to examine health impacts and costs associated with transportation in the United States.  The briefing will address how federal policies regarding transportation infrastructure, in addition to policies concerning vehicles and fuels, can play an important role in improving public health and reducing health care costs.  Panelists will include:

• Andrea Hricko, MPH, Associate Professor, Dept. of Preventive Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
• Lawrence Frank, PhD, Professor, Sustainable Transportation Program, University of British Columbia
• Georges Benjamin, MD, Executive Director, American Public Health Association
• Thomas Gotschi, PhD, Director of Research, Rails-to-Trails Conservancy

The transportation sector is associated with multiple risk factors for public health.  Exposure to air pollution from vehicles has been linked to increased mortality, cancer, lung ailments, and other health problems.  Limited options to walk or bike have been shown to be a factor in obesity cases, which have reached epidemic proportions in the United States.  Many of these impacts, asthma and obesity in particular, disproportionately affect children. 
 
Recent studies and an emerging body of research have documented local, regional and national health impacts associated with our transportation system -- adding costs to the national health care bill estimated in the billions of dollars.   In addition, climate change, driven in part by carbon emissions from the transportation sector, is projected to exacerbate a variety of public health concerns.
 
Upcoming federal transportation legislation and infrastructure provisions in economic stimulus legislation are important opportunities to avoid and minimize these public health impacts and costs-particularly in an era of rising health care costs that have devastated many household budgets and threaten to overwhelm the federal budget.  This briefing will provide an essential overview of these impacts and costs, and how transportation policy and planning practices can substantially reduce them.  Key questions to be addressed include:

• What are the present and potential future health impacts associated with transportation?
• What are the opportunities to reduce these impacts and what are the potential cost savings?
• What policy mechanisms are most appropriate and effective to address transportation-related health impacts?