Mission Moment: Injury Prevention

Preventing injuries has been part of Shepherd Center’s mission since the beginning, but the concept wasn’t formalized as a program until 2012. And the program’s latest initiative is the Rural Roads Project. The project, now in its third year, takes aim at the alarming preponderance of motor vehicle crashes on roads and highways outside urban areas. In partnership with the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, the project identified Laurens County, Georgia—with its high number of motor vehicle fatalities and low rate of seatbelt usage—as the focus of a marketing campaign. “It’s a new approach—all about making seatbelt usage a social norm,” says Emma Harrington, MSPS, director of injury prevention and education services at Shepherd. “If you think about it, highway safety has always been, ‘Click it or ticket.’ But with all the slogans, our behaviors have not changed. In fact, they’ve worsened, especially since COVID-19.” 

Shepherd has become a leader in the injury prevention community through constant innovation, focusing not simply on behavior change, but also on safe road systems, advocating for better engineering and infrastructure, and building local coalitions to take on these life-and-death issues long-term. “When I started in 2014, we mostly produced flyers and brochures,” Emma says.  “But it’s evolved into much more of an evidence-based public health approach, targeting the top mechanisms of injury for the patients we treat—motor vehicle crashes, violence, falls, and, in  the summer, diving.” 

It may be impossible to tell how many people were not injured because of any intervention, but statistics show that the safe-highway system approach, which focuses on safe road users, safe vehicles, safe speeds, safe roads, and post-crash care, works. “They’ve been doing it in Europe for decades, and in Australia and New Zealand,” Emma says. “They’ve saved lives. We know it’s possible. The behavioral change piece is still there, but it’s with the assumption that we’re humans and we’re going to make mistakes. So, how can we lessen the impact of those mistakes? It’s exciting to be on the cutting edge of change.”

Written by Teresa Weaver

This story is an excerpt from “Mission Moments: 50 Years of Rebuilding Lives One Moment at a Time,” a book celebrating Shepherd’s 50th anniversary in 2025. You can explore the full eBook or purchase a hardcover copy here.