Speading the safer community message

CAROLYN COGGIN used to be in research, as an associate professor at Auckland University. Her specialist field: injury.
Nowadays, after being pricked by her concern that while research in itself was important and valuable it seldom led to any effective changes, Dr Coggin heads the Safe Communities Foundation of New Zealand.
In that role she actively promotes the Safe Communities concept, with its "evidence-based" benefits, to local authorities throughout New Zealand.
It was for that purpose that Dr Coggin was back in Wanganui yesterday to talk to more than 50 people about Safe Communities at a Wanganui District Council-hosted function.
This was Dr Coggin's second visit to Wanganui. The first was in March and that prompted the district council to begin the process toward having Wanganui accredited as a "safe community".
Yesterday's gathering was essentially aimed at setting up what Dr Coggin calls the "collaborative" phase on the way to accreditation where the myriad of groups and organisations already engaged in community safety come together and start reading from the same page. That's Coggin-speak for setting up the coalition that will develop the action plan.
When it was first introduced into New Zealand in 1994, the Safe Communities project was focused almost exclusively on "unintentional injury" accidents. Today it incorporates all kinds of injuries from all causes.
Since that focus was broadened the Safe Communities network in this country has expanded to include six accredited district councils.
Dr Coggin said she now has 18 other territorial local authorities, including Wanganui, which were working toward accreditation.
Essentially the Safe Communities concept is about establishing strongly collaborative, injury-prevention coalitions, a role in which local councils have a significant part to play.
Dr Coggin was adamant that Safe Communities is not merely some warm fuzzy idea. She said as a researcher she was almost solely driven by evidence-based results. And the Safe Communities model she now promotes is an evidenced-based programme offering long-term, sustainable options for making communities safer places to live. The consequent major benefit is the real reduction in New Zealand's substantial "injury burden" which imposes a huge drain on human and financial resources.
And if the participation in yesterday's meeting and the range of organisations represented was any indication, Wanganui is well on the way to taking up the programme and joining the national and international Safe Communities network.