Safety 2026 Workshops

The project will be hosting two pre-conference workshops in Cape Town at Safety 2026.

1) 31 August 2026:  Strengthening the use of evidence in injury policy in LMICs 

2) 1 September 2026: Increasing the use of case-control studies in LMICs 

Details of both workshops are provided below. 

Space in these workshops is limited, and they will likely fill up soon. If you'd like to attend, we recommend registering early. Note that the two workshops will be held in different locations and have separate registration links.

Workshop 1: Strengthening the use of evidence in injury policy in LMICs

Location: Workshop 17 Watershed, 17 Dock Road, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, 8002.

Date/Time: 31 August 2026, 9 am - 5 pm

Overview: The workshop will bring together policymakers, data producers, epidemiologists, and allied researchers around a shared vision of evidence-based safety programs and policies. Topics of interest include strengthening injury surveillance systems in LMICs, improving alignment between safety regulations and epidemiological data, and the use of data for safety governance, among others.

DRAFT PROGRAM

9:00 am – 9:15 am    Welcome and setting the stage for the day  

9:15 am – 10:45 am  PANEL DISCUSSION 1: How can journals better support injury research globally?

Issues of interest:  Although there’s been a marked increase in publications from LMICs in recent years, the studies remain methodologically weak. Can journals help address this? There are also questions about equity in publishing, authorship in collaborative studies, among others. 

10:45 am–11:00 am   Coffee Break 

11:00 am–12:30 pm   PANEL DISCUSSION 2: Strengthening evidence on the effectiveness of infrastructure-related highway safety measures

Issues of interest: While most LMICs are rapidly expanding their highway infrastructure, the safety interventions included are largely informed by evidence and design standards from high-income countries. There is little epidemiological evidence on the effectiveness of these interventions in the heterogeneous, mixed-traffic environments typical of LMICs, where interactions among pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, animal-drawn vehicles, and motor vehicles may fundamentally alter their safety effects. This panel will discuss the current evidence for highway safety interventions in LMICs, identify priorities for strengthening the evidence base, and explore strategies to build the data, funding, partnerships, and research capacity needed to support rigorous evaluation of highway safety interventions.  

12:30 pm–1:30 pm    Lunch

1:30 pm – 3:00 pm   PANEL DISCUSSION 3: Building and Sustaining Mortuary-Based Injury Surveillance: Lessons from South Africa

Issues of interest: Mortuary-based surveillance has the potential to generate detailed, policy-relevant information on injury mortality that is often unavailable from other sources, especially in settings with weak death registration or police reporting. Several countries have developed such systems, with varying degrees of success, reflecting differences in institutional arrangements, resources, and public health priorities. This panel will use South Africa’s long experience with mortuary surveillance as a starting point for a broader discussion of how countries can establish, sustain, and strengthen mortuary-based injury surveillance systems. Panelists from South Africa and other countries will compare their experiences, examining what has worked, what has proven difficult, and how surveillance data have been translated into research and policy.

3:00 pm – 3:15 pm   Coffee Break

3:15 pm – 4:45 pm   PANEL DISCUSSION 4 The Future of Injury Surveillance: Integrating Traditional and Computational Approaches

Issues of interest: Reliable injury surveillance is fundamental to evidence-based injury prevention. Traditional surveillance systems—including civil registration and vital statistics, verbal autopsies, trauma registries, police records, and population surveys—remain the foundation of injury epidemiology and have driven decades of advances in understanding data quality, completeness, coverage, and bias. At the same time, advances in computational methods and new digital data sources—including AI-assisted coding, computer vision, remote sensing, and online data—offer unprecedented opportunities to strengthen injury surveillance. This panel will examine how these emerging approaches can be rigorously evaluated, integrated with established surveillance systems, and translated from promising demonstrations into scalable tools that improve injury surveillance and public health practice.

 4:45 pm – 5:00 pm     Concluding words  

Cost & Capacity: Free for LMIC researchers, but there is limited space. Register soon!

Registration Link:  This workshop is the 2nd day of the International Collaborative Effort (ICE) on Injury Statistics meeting.  To participate, you need to register for the ICE meeting at this link: https://shop.monash.edu/the-international-collaborative-effort-on-injury-statistics-injury-ice-meeting.html 

Note that the first day (Aug 30) of the ICE meeting will consist of research presentations on methodological issues in injury statistics with a focus on issues relevant to high-income countries.  The second day of this meeting  (Aug 31) is the LMIC-focused workshop described above. You are welcome to register and attend both days.

Acknowledgments: Core funding for this collaboration is provided by the Kiphart Center for Global Health and the Provost's Global Faculty Awards (PGFA) at the University of Chicago. This workshop is organized jointly by the South African Medical Research Council and the International Collaborative Effort (ICE) on Injury Statistics, and is co-sponsored by the Independent Council for Road Safety International (ICoRSI).

For more information: Please email kavibhalla@gmail.com

=========================================================================================================

Workshop 2: Increasing the use of case-control studies in LMICs

Location: Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC)

Date/Time: 1 September 2026, 9 am - 5 pm

Overview: This workshop brings together researchers interested in increasing the use of robust epidemiological study designs, particularly case-control studies, in assessing risks and evaluating interventions for preventing injuries.  Case-control studies offer a practical, rigorous, and cost-effective approach for evaluating injury interventions in information-poor settings. Therefore, an ongoing international collaborative effort has been building the capacity of injury researchers in LMICs to undertake case-control studies. Over the last year, training sessions have been held in Kampala (Uganda), Delhi (India), and Bogota (Colombia) to help researchers design and conduct such studies. This workshop presents preliminary findings from these studies and explores how to increase the use of robust study designs in the evaluation of injury interventions in LMICs. 

DRAFT PROGRAM  

9:00 am – 9:15 am Welcome, and about this project  

9:15 am – 9:45 am PRESENTATION: Why Case-Control Studies?

9:45 am – 10:45 am RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS: 3 studies (Each researcher will present for 15 mins, leaving 15 mins for  Q&A at the end)

10:45 am – 11:00 pm Coffee Break 

11:15 am – 1:00 pm  PANEL DISCUSSION: How do we build evidence for injury interventions in LMICs?

Issues of interest: How do we build capacity for LMIC researchers to do better evaluations? How do we get these studies funded? How do we get these studies published?   (20 min presentation + 20 panel discussion + 35 audience discussion)

1:00 pm – 2:00 pm Lunch

2:00 pm – 3:30 pm RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS: Rapid-fire presentations of 10 posters

(Each researcher presents for 6 minutes, leaving 30 mins for Q&A at the end)

3:30 pm – 3:45 pm Coffee Break

3:45 pm – 5:00 pm PANEL DISCUSSION: What is the path ahead for this work? 

Issues of interest: Based on the experience of the case-control project so far, what are the common technical hurdles (data sources, data access, methods) these studies face, and how can they be addressed? The project will consider how to move stalled studies forward, and the studies that are progressing well to completion and publication.  (20 min presentation + 20 panel discussion + 35 audience discussion)

Cost & Capacity: Free for those registered for Safety 2026, but there is limited space. Register soon!

Registration Link:  Registration for this workshop is through the Safety 2026 website. Please go to this link, scroll down to our workshop (Increasing the Use of Case-Control Studies in Injury Prevention in LMICs), and click the link for registration. 

Acknowledgments: Core funding for this collaboration is provided by the Kiphart Center for Global Health and the Provost's Global Faculty Awards (PGFA) at the University of Chicago. This workshop is organized jointly with the South African Medical Research Council and is co-sponsored by the Independent Council for Road Safety International (ICoRSI).

For more information: Please email kavibhalla@gmail.com