In 2019, the Faculty of Public Health (FPH) in collaboration with the Alliance for Useful Evidence launched the Bazalgette Professorship Champion of Evidence Award. The Award recognises a Fellow of FPH for major contributions to public health policy and/or practice through research translation for the benefit of UK population health.
This year, Professor Sarah Jones and Professor Adrian Davis will give a joint lecture, 'On evidence, equity, energy, elephants and ending wars.' The lecture will cover some of the key issues in the understanding of the relationship between land transport and health, including the evidence base for 20mph, inequities in the transport environment, the importance of changes to the way we travel in terms of the climate emergency, and the links between the transport system and conflict.
Sarah has been working in public health and road safety in Wales for over 30 years. As a consultant at Public Health Wales, Sarah has been involved in advocating for the introduction of 20mph speed limits (which has been successful) and Graduated Driver Licensing (which hasn’t), as well as continuing to work to improve understanding of the links between transport and health.
For too close to 40 years, Adrian’s work has focused on the health impacts of road transport, the understanding of the importance of health by transport planners, the need for intersectoral collaboration, partnerships and trust, and the application of science in selecting which policies and practices most support health enhancing travel behaviours. On the journey he early on worked with the BMA (1997) to draft the first national Medical Association report of road transport, for the late Sir Donald Acheson on inequalities (1998), for NHS Bristol (2008-13) embedded into Bristol City Council, with Dept Transport (2013-14) mostly on cost benefit analysis reviews, for Public Health England (2014-15) on guidance to local authorities, and with WHO Europe on numerous occasions documenting the multiple health harms and benefits.
