Call for Abstracts - Posters and Presentations

Conference on Health and Active Transportation

Joining Forces and Moving Forward

December 11-12, 2019

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine
Keck Center
 Washington, DC

CLOSED

There is great momentum in the fields of health, transportation, physical activity, and urban planning to design cities, towns and develop policies that promote active transportation. Since our initial 2015 conference, Moving Active Transportation to Higher Ground: Opportunities for Accelerating the Assessment of Health Impacts, a great deal of progress has been made. With increased awareness, new institutional relationships have been formed, research has expanded, and there are more opportunities to involve new technology, particularly in designing and promoting active transportation in a multidisciplinary environment.

This conference will bring together an interdisciplinary group of practitioners and researchers in urban planning, public health, physical activity, transportation, civil engineering, chronic disease, and health economics to explore and collaborate on identifying impacts of the health effects of transportation policies, planning and infrastructure. In addition, attendees at this conference will develop an understanding of the institutional opportunities and barriers for considering health within the transportation field. The conference will highlight innovative practices in health and active transportation.

Conference Objectives

1. Building Strategic Institutional Relationships at the Intersection of Health and Active Transportation
2. Identifying Research Needs and Opportunities for Collaboration 
3. Documenting Reflecting on Innovative Practices

Submission Criteria
To help advance the objectives of the conference, posters are being sought concerning these general themes:

• Institutionalizing connections between health and transportation at multiple levels;
• Improvement and harmonization of health and transportation data and performance indicators;
• Advances in scaling implementation of active transportation policies (e.g., Complete Streets, Health in All Policies);
• Identifying and addressing health disparities and health equity consequences of transportation policy and infrastructure;
• Understanding the association between infrastructure improvements for active transportation and non-health factors (i.e., “additional benefits”) such as social cohesion, crime, safety, economic vitality, and climate;
• Key aspects of transportation for critical health sector targets such as cancer prevention and increasing physical activity;
• Approaches to enhance community facilitators (e.g., community and street design, transportation systems) and lessen barriers (e.g., safety, crime) to using active transportation;
• Active Transportation across the lifespan (children to senior adults) and/or with a focus on health equity;
• Impacts of shared mobility (bikeshare, electric scooters programs) and other mobile technology such as wayfinding on active transportation; and
• Addressing active transportation for persons with disabilities,

When submitting your abstract please indicate whether the abstract will be data-driven new research or related to something more akin to new frameworks, tools, practices, or policy. Then indicate which of the theme areas best fits your abstract. The abstract should be no more than 500 words and should include the following sub-headings: for new, data-driven research, please include background, purpose, methods, results, and conclusion; for other types of abstracts (frameworks, tools, practices, policy, etc.), please include background and purpose, description, lessons learned, conclusions and implications, and next steps, if any. All abstracts will be peer reviewed. Authors will be notified of acceptance by late July.  
See sample abstract:  http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/dva/specialtyconferences/2019/CHAT2019/Example_Abstract_with_Section_Headings.docx.

The Conference is hosted and developed by Transportation Research Board Subcommittee on Health and Transportation and the Standing Committees on Pedestrians and Bicycle Transportation, in collaboration with the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the US Department of Transportation John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe Center).

For more information, please contact:

Janet R. Wojcik, Ph.D., FACSM, Conference Co-chair, 803-323-4687 or

Gary Jenkins, Transportation Research Board