The double dividend of safety: using World Risk Poll data to reveal hidden benefits

Research shows that there is a connection between exposure to risk and health behaviour. People who are exposed to risks beyond their personal control feel less motivated to behave healthily because those risks reduce the odds that they will survive to enjoy the rewards of doing so.

If we make people safer (the first benefit), they will also be more motivated to take care of their health (a second benefit). We call this combined benefit the double dividend of safety. However, it’s something that many people aren’t aware of. We want policymakers to be aware of the double dividends they could produce by making people safer, and we want safety organisations to be empowered to measure the impacts they might be having on health behaviour.

The project has two key elements. The first is working with key organisations to raise awareness of the double dividend of safety and to help them apply it in their work. The second is using data from the World Risk Poll to build statistical models to help us estimate the impact that improving different types of safety could have in different countries. For example, the models could tell us what changes in smoking rates we might see if worry about traffic accidents were halved in World Risk Poll countries. We’ll use these models to create a data dashboard. This can be used by organisations to quantify the potential double dividend of safety which might be gained by tackling key hazards in their regions of interest.

The project aims to see those people who could benefit most from being made safer (both in terms of safety and also health behaviour improvements) receiving more help. Our materials and data dashboard will support this goal in several different ways.

Firstly, they may be used by those working in public health to advocate for safety interventions as health interventions. They may also be used by policymakers and funding bodies to assess where best to focus their funding and activities. Safety campaigning organisations will be able to use the dashboard and materials to strengthen their campaigns, or to reinforce their bids for funding. 

The modelling we plan to do couldn’t be done without the World Risk Poll data. 

Importantly, the World Risk Poll covers countries in which people are exposed to very high levels of risk. Those people who could benefit most from safety improvements generally live in places where data collection is very hard to do. The World Risk Poll has a good proportion of those places covered, which makes it a really impactful poll.

We also need the demographic data collected in the World Risk Poll because our analyses need to take account of people’s characteristics. Things like age, gender, education level, and income will have important effects on health behaviour, and the data collected within the World Risk Poll will help us to take account of that.

We’re keen to hear from any organisations who might want to learn more about the double dividend of safety and who might be able to use our data dashboard to do any of the following things:

• Strengthen a safety policy campaign.
• Strengthen the case for funding a safety campaign.
• Advocate for safety interventions as health interventions.
• Assess where to focus funding and activities.

Of course, the dashboard might also have uses we’ve not thought of, and we’re keen to hear about those too. So, please do get in touch if you’d like to engage with us on this project.

To find out more about this project, get in touch with the project team at [email protected].