Some of us remember the bad old days when nobody wore seat belts and babies bounced on their mothers’ laps in the front seats of cars. For others, it’s the stuff of legend. Since the advent of seat belt laws in the late 1980’s, the proportion of people buckling up has skyrocketed from fewer than 15 percent to over 90 percent in many states. The laws required people to change their behavior initially and continuously until buckling up was a habit of mind and a social norm. Accordingly, the number of deaths and serious injuries from car accidents has plummeted by more than half. Other policies—including minimum wage laws, zoning and urban planning, or childcare regulations and guidelines—have had large effects on improving population health.
At the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), we have witnessed firsthand the impact that policies and laws can have in improving health. With this in mind, RWJF is launching Policy for Action (P4A). This new initiative provides up to $1.5 million in funding (or $250K in individual grants up to two years) for research efforts that identify policies, laws and regulations in the public and private sectors that support building a Culture of Health. Our focus is intentionally wide-ranging. We recognize that policies developed both within health and prevention sectors and beyond—in education, economics, transportation, justice, and housing, for example—can ultimately affect the ability of all Americans to lead healthy lives.
[For more of this story, written by Alonzo L. Plough, go to http://www.rwjf.org/en/culture...nd_seat_beltsan.html]
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