The Center for Health and Safety Culture at Montana State University will host a symposium June 20-22 at the Baxter Hotel in Bozeman on how growing positive shared values and beliefs can reduce vehicle crashes, drug use, and violence.

 

Attendees of the 2018 Center for Health and Safety Culture Symposium will discuss how culture is represented by shared values and beliefs as well as recent findings about promoting healthy and safe behaviors in families, workplaces and communities, according to Nic Ward, director of the center and a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering in MSU’s Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering.

 

“Our goal is for attendees to represent diverse roles, including practitioners, policy-makers and academics, and diverse issues in health and safety,” Ward said. “The symposium format will create extensive opportunities to exchange ideas and ask questions.”

 

The symposium is intended for those working at the community, state and national levels improve traffic safety, address substance abuse, and reduce violence and the mistreatment of children.

 

Ward said the three-day event will focus on themes stemming from the center’s research and discuss best practices. The center is located within MSU’s Western Transportation Institute.

 

“Much of our work is about trying to understand the factors that influence how people make healthy and safe choices and then exploring how we can grow those factors,” Ward said of the research being done at the center.