Member, Active Transportation Injuries and Recovery Outcomes Research Team

Have you, or someone close to you, been injured as a pedestrian or cyclist? If so, your experience may help to develop a research study looking at injury circumstances and recovery outcomes of patients involved in active transportation, including walking or cycling on public places. The Road Safety and Public Health Team from the Department of Emergency Medicine, University of British Columbia, is looking to partner with two patients who have experienced injury as a pedestrian or cyclist to develop active transportation safety research.

Open to: Patient partners in the Lower Mainland and Fraser Valley

Lead Organization or Department

Road Safety & Public Health Team, Emergency Medicine, UBC

Aim

• Bring the perspectives of injured pedestrians or cyclists to help identify relevant information needed in this research. We will bring together voices from patients and other stakeholders who are interested in promoting safe active transportation. Working with stakeholders including city planners of road infrastructure and health care decision makers to promote safe active transportation.
• Patient partners will help provide inputs into injury prevention, medical care and social supports for those who are injured while engaging in active transportation.

Level of Engagement

This opportunity is at the level of involve on the spectrum of engagement. The promise to you is that the health care partner will involve patients in planning and design phases to ensure ideas or concerns are considered and reflected in alternatives and recommendations.

Eligibility

If you have a strong interest in this work but have not yet completed a PVN orientation and volunteer agreement, are unsure if your experience is a good fit or feel another format of engagement would work better with your availability, please contact the engagement leader directly.

Logistics

• Vacancies: 2
• Date/Time: Fall 2020, date and time to be determined in consultation with patient partners
• Location: Vancouver General Hospital and/or teleconference
• Commitment: Monthly, in year one, and quarterly in year 2 & 3

Reimbursement

Reimbursement will be provided if the study successfully obtains funding. Pre-approved out of pocket expenses (e.g. car mileage, parking) will be reimbursed for in- person meetings per Canadian Institute of Health Research’s patient engagement reimbursement policy. Details of this process including the length of time for reimbursement, as well as any further compensation will be shared directly with the patient partner.

Background

Active transportation (e.g., cycling and walking) is encouraged as a healthy, environmentally friendly mode of transportation. However, cyclists and pedestrians are often injured, and fear of injury is a deterrent to active transportation. Active transportation related injuries can result in psychological stress, chronic pain and prolonged absenteeism from work/study. Health care providers should know which injury survivors are at risk of a poor outcome and policy makers need to know the associated costs. Yet active transportation injuries are poorly captured in road traffic injury surveillance reports. Outcome following active transportation injuries and risk factors for a poor outcome are also inadequately researched especially for injuries of pedestrian falls while walking in public places and single-bicycle crashes. The objectives of this research include:

1. Reporting the circumstances of active transportation injury events and injuries sustained,
2. Studying health related quality of life (HRQoL) outcomes in active transportation injury survivors and identify factors associated with a poor outcome,
3. Estimating health care costs and cost of lost productivity for active transportation injury survivors, and
4. Developing evidence-based guidelines that influence clinical practice, and policy recommendations to improve active transportation safety. This study will enroll patients from three participating emergency departments in British Columbia.

We are involving patient partners at all stages of the study process because such collaboration will help design baseline and follow up questionnaires that are better suited to our target population. At the final stage, patient partners will have the opportunity to provide their inputs into education and recommendation development for promoting active transportation safety. There are minimal risks to our patient partners except that talking about their experiences may bring back unpleasant memory of their injuries.

Health Care Partner Contact Information

Jami Brown
Engagement Leader, Patient and Public Engagement | Fraser Valley
604.510.0449
jbrown@bcpsqc.ca