Research Initiatives Committee
The Research Initiatives Committee is part of the IPATH mission and vision to integrate health professionals as part of the team involved in the planning and design of transportation infrastructure projects. This strategy provides a competitive advantage not only from a market perspective, but also in terms of decision-making. A cross-disciplinary approach helps to eliminate miscommunication of priorities by partnering transportation and health professionals so that innovative and multidimensional problem-solving is possible. The emphasis is on implementing practical solutions, through mutual communication, capacity building, and sustainable change/growth that influence the sociopolitical, environmental, and economic impacts of the transportation infrastructure within affected communities. To this end, a cultural shift in transportation infrastructure project planning and design can occur based on a systematic evidence-based research driven methodology. In this proposed scenario, health professionals contribute the skill-set necessary to effectively evaluate the health impacts of a proposed facility by implementing techniques of qualitative and quantitative measurements that complement the accepted cost-benefit analysis of transportation accountability. It will be vital for both transportation and health professionals to maintain their specific expertise and freely exchange information based on lessons learned so that causal links to planning and design issues lead to improvements in best practices, policy making and community livability.

The 2020 Action Plan is available for review and public comment. Current projects include the following:
​​The Research Initiatives Committee is led by Karyn M. Warsow, DrPH(c) and Jenny Mindell, PhD.
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​Karyn is a cross-disciplinary professional with 15 years of experience, in the area of trauma and critical care medicine; specifically traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries as a result of motor vehicle crashes and interpersonal violence. With this experience, she successfully crossed over to the field of transportation after advocating for policy change in her local community. Karyn brings to the field of transportation, a unique perspective that merges best practices and lessons learned from multiple disciplines to devise innovative solutions. Over the years, she has developed an exceptional network of high-level national and international multimodal transportation, urban planning and public health contacts. Karyn is a strong results-based leader. She is the Founder and Executive Director of the Transportation Public Health Link (TPH Link), which administers the International Professional Association for Transport & Health (IPATH) and the International Conference on Transport & Health (ICTH). In addition, Karyn has established a partnership with the Transport & Health Study Group (THSG) in the United Kingdom and serves on the Board as the US Policy and Advocacy Representative. Karyn is also peer-reviewer for the Journal of Transport & Health and multiple Committees of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) with membership in the TRB Strategic Management Committee and a member of the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE) Steering Committee on Transportation and Health. LinkedIn Profile
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​Jenny is a Professor of Public Health in the Health and Social Surveys Research Group of the Research Department of Epidemiology & Public Health at UCL (University College London). She has experience in epidemiology, general practice, and health promotion. Jenny leads the UCL Health Survey for England team and is health lead of UCL’s Transport Institute. Jenny supervises doctoral students in both the Population Health Sciences and the Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering Faculties. Previously, she was Deputy Director of the London Health Observatory and led health impact assessments of the London Mayor’s Transport and other strategies. Jenny was also Principal Investigator for a cross-disciplinary project developing tools to measure community severance by road traffic. Jenny was lead editor of the 2011 report, "Health on the Move2" published by the Transport & Health Study Group (THSG). She is Editor-in-chief of Journal of Transport and Health, former Co-chair (Science) of THSG, and chairs the UK Faculty of Public Health’s Health Improvement Committee. LinkedIn Profile
Contact Form
If you're interested in being an active member of the IPATH Research Initiatives Committee, please fill out the form below and Karyn will contact you shortly (Note that you must be an IPATH member to be on a committee.).