The FLOURISH Transportation Action Team’s findings were amplified on the national stage last weekend as Kendra Copanas presented this work at the Transportation Research Board annual meeting. She served on a panel discussing intersectional gender and race disparities in accessing healthcare and other critical destinations.
From 2017 – 2019, dozens of community leaders and partners from managed care companies, health leaders, transit agencies, and community-based organizations worked to make transportation more reliable, accessible, and safe for pregnant and parenting families. The FLOURISH Transportation Action Team facilitated collaboration between all three Medicaid Managed Care companies to standardize transportation services, making it easier to book a ride. With funding from the BUILD Health Challenge, we partnered with all three hospital systems and the City of St. Louis’ Health Department to analyze health care transportation needs, promote better policy, and advance ongoing community engagement around transportation as a critical social determinant of health.
FLOURISH’s data and storytelling helped fuel regional awareness about transportation’s impact on health, made the complexity of the transportation system more visible, and engaged public health and healthcare sectors to think in new ways about how they can play a role in improving social determinants of health. The Transportation Action Team demonstrated the value of centering the consumer’s experience and the power of bringing together community residents with system leaders to better understand the impact systems have on people’s lives.
If you want to learn more about the topics covered in the workshop, check out this policy brief: Gender, Climate and Transport by the Women’s Environment & Development Organization.
To learn more about the Transportation Action Team’s work, read the final report here.