Health Department receives Ohio Traffic Safety Grant
To save lives and improve the quality of life for citizens, the Tuscarawas County Health Department will use the grant funds to raise public awareness and educate the public about traffic-safety issues.
The Tuscarawas County Health Department was recently awarded $41,983.46 in federal traffic-safety funding from the Ohio Department of Public Safety’s Ohio Traffic Safety Office.
“We are committed to working with safety partners to address traffic-safety concerns in Tuscarawas County. These partners are critical to the success of Safe Communities’ traffic-safety efforts,” said Kelly Snyder, Safe Communities program coordinator for the Tuscarawas County Health Department.
This will be the fourth year the Safe Communities grant has been awarded to the Tuscarawas County Health Department. In the past year Safe Communities of Tuscarawas County reached over 6,000 people through outreach at more than 25 events throughout the county. Some events included working in many of the local high schools to educate youth about the importance of safe driving.
The group also spent time educating the driving population of Tuscarawas County on impaired driving, seat-belt use, distracted driving and motorcycle awareness. In 2018 Tuscarawas County saw a 45 percent decrease in traffic-related fatalities compared to 2017. This includes a total of 10 fatal crashes that resulted in 11 fatalities.
So far in 2019 Tuscarawas County has experienced eight fatal crashes with nine fatalities. Of these fatal crashes, 25 percent were not restrained and 50 percent involved impairment of alcohol and/or drugs.
To save lives and improve the quality of life for citizens, the Tuscarawas County Health Department will use the grant funds to raise public awareness and educate the public about traffic-safety issues.
The funds are passed through OTSO from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to support the efforts of safety partners statewide and focus on traffic-safety priority areas such as restraint use, impaired driving, motorcycle safety and youthful drivers.
Competitive grant proposals are accepted and reviewed by OTSO. The FFY 2020 competitive grant process solicited grant proposals from state agencies, nonprofit organizations, colleges, universities, hospitals, political subdivisions and other interested groups within selected Ohio counties and jurisdictions (based upon the number of fatal crashes).
To find out more about the Safe Communities project, visit www.tchdnow.org/safe-communities.html.