About us
The Safe Communities is a local public/private partnership that sustains joint action by area agencies, businesses, and neighborhoods to SAVE LIVES, prevent injuries and make our community safer.
Over 350 organizations are active members.
Promoting traffic safety, preventing falls and other injuries at home, keeping children safe and addressing the tragedy of suicide are on our agenda. We are a dynamic organization that makes our community safer by promoting effective projects and programs, and by increasing public awareness about how all of us can help save lives.
Why is our work important?
In Madison and Dane County, serious injuries are far too common and have tragic consequences:
- Unintentional injuries are the number one cause of death for children under age 14 – each a terrible loss for affected families and our community.
- Falls are the top cause of injury-related deaths among older adults – and Dane County’s elderly fall at an alarming rate in relation to the rest of the nation.
- On average we lose 60 people each year in Dane County traffic crashes. These deaths are all the more senseless because most could have been prevented through use of safety belts and avoidance of speeding, and drinking and driving.
- Forty to fifty Dane County residents commit suicide each year – over 500 are hospitalized or admitted to emergency departments as a result of suicide attempts. 90% of people who commit suicide have a treatable mental illness or substance abuse problem – these tragedies can be prevented with treatment, education and support.
- In one year, hospital charges alone resulting from injuries sustained by Madison and Dane County residents were nearly $54.5 million. This figure excludes doctor bills, nursing home care, and rehabilitation services, lost wages, and other injury-related costs.
No one agency can address the staggering human and financial toll taken by injuries. We need a coordinated, community-wide effort that draws resources and expertise from diverse people and agencies. This is why Safe Communities’ work is so important.
How do we work together to save lives?
Safe Communities coordinates county-wide, collaborative campaigns with diverse organizations and individuals that have a stake in safety. Police and fire departments, hospitals and health care organizations, neighborhood associations, faith communities, public health, elder- and youth-serving agencies, utilities and insurance companies – are active partners in our coalition’s projects. We are committed to effective action: we evaluate our projects to assess their impacts, and employ evidence-based approaches wherever possible.
We estimate that since Safe Communities’ inception in 1999, our collaborative projects directly improved the personal safety of more than 35,000 Dane County residents, most of them children and older adults.
What have we accomplished as a coalition of Safe Communities?
- a 4% increase in safety belt use in rural Dane County
- a 30% increase in motorists yielding to pedestrians at pilot intersections
- a 50 pedestrian flag sites in Dane County
- local Slow Down Campaign featured in Parent's Magazine
- Green Yellow Red Campaign to reduce impaired motorcycling touted as a promising national model
- launched a concerted effort, via Safe Communities Falls Prevention Task Force, to reduce serious falls among older adults by 10% over 3 years
- Dane County is national-demonstration-project-central: we are the only county in the nation to be site of three NHTSA demonstration projects to develop best practices in traffic safety
What is the future?
We envision a safer future, one in which lives lost or irrevocably changed due to needless deaths and serious injuries are rare, rather than an everyday occurrence.
A safer community is within our reach. Partnerships built by our coalition has and will continue to make it happen.