Engaging the Somali Community in the Road Safety Agenda: A Process Evaluation from the London Borough of Hounslow

In the UK the most disadvantaged in society are more likely than those more affluent to be injured or killed in a road traffic
collision and therefore it is a major cause of health inequality. There is a strong link between ethnicity, deprivation and
injury. Whilst national road traffic injury data does not collect ethnic origin the London accident and analysis group does
in terms of broad categories such as ‘white’, ‘black’ and ‘Asian’. Analysis of this data revealed the over-representation
of child pedestrian casualties from a ‘black’ ethnic origin. This information led road safety practitioners in one London
borough to map child pedestrian casualties against census data which identified the Somali community as being particularly
at risk of being involved in a road traffic collision. Working with the community they sought to discuss and address road
safety issues and introduced practical evidence based approaches such as child pedestrian training. The process evaluation
of the project used a qualitative approach and showed that engaging with community partners and working across organisational
boundaries was a useful strategy to gain an understanding of the Somali community. A bottom approach provided the community
with a sense of control and involvement which appears to add value in terms of reducing the sense of powerlessness that marginalised
communities often feel. In terms of evaluation, small projects like these, lend themselves to a qualitative process evaluation
though it has to be accepted that the strength of this evidence may be regarded as weak. Where possible routine injury data
needs to take into account ethnicity which is a known risk factor for road casualty involvement which needs to be continually
monitored.