Outreach and Engagement

Community Engagement Toolkit: Essentials for Planning & Facilitating Meaningful Conversations (NADTC, 2025)

The Community Engagement Toolkit from the National Aging and Disability Transportation Center (NADTC) offers a structured approach and useful tools to discuss how well local transportation options are meeting the needs of individuals in the community, and create a plan for improvement.

Community Engagement at the Intersection of Public Health and Transportation: Highlighting Community Based Organizations’ Use of the Promotores Model for Engaging Community Members in the Field of Transportation (SafeTREC, 2023)

The Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Program (CPBSP), funded by the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS), offers SafeTREC and California Walks the opportunity to work closely with dozens of local community stakeholders, including community-based organizations (CBOs), businesses, residents, and local advisory committees, in jurisdictions across the state. Recently, SafeTREC had the opportunity to work in partnership with a few CBOs that are using a Promotores Model to deliver resources and programs in the communities they serve. This brief explores the use of the Promotores Model to engage residents in transportation safety campaigns in their community.

Prioritizing Health Equity in Vision Zero Planning (2023)

The Vision Zero Network has released a new resource, Prioritizing Health Equity in Vision Zero Planning, that shares actionable steps and examples to align Vision Zero work with meaningful advancements towards safe, healthy and equitable mobility for all.

Inclusive Transportation Planning: Engaging Marginalized and Underserved Communities (NADTC, 2023)

NADTC’s Transportation Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Initiative began in 2020 and collected information to identify transportation needs of older adults, younger adults with disabilities from historically marginalized and underserved communities and their caregivers; identify promising practices and education; and provide guidance and support for communities and providers. This Equity Brief centers on learnings derived from the DEI Initiative about the role of caregivers from marginalized communities, gathered as part of the 2021 Transportation DEI Survey as well as focus groups and stakeholder meetings held in 2022.

Authentic Community Engagement to Support Equity (Urban Institute, 2023)

When solutions are genuinely designed in collaboration with affected communities, it is possible to shift power, change systems, and advance equity. Watch the Urban Institute's webinar for a conversation about innovative strategies for centering communities, approaches for generating meaningful and sustainable engagement, and proven methods and practices for translating research into tools and action.

Policy Process Evaluation for Equity (Change Lab Solutions, 2023)

The lists of sample metrics in this resource provide local policymakers, public health practitioners, and community groups with a foundation for further conversation about how we measure the community impact of the policy process. These non-exhaustive lists stem from research across the field of public health; only some correspond to existing examples in commercial tobacco. In time, we hope to share examples of each metric at work and to update the research as we continue to learn from our partners.

NOTE: While centered on commercial tobacco prevention, the guidance, evaluation options, and recommended metrics can be helpful in measuring effectiveness of community engagement efforts in other public health topic areas like pedestrian and bicyclist safety.

Inclusive Public Participation in Transit Decision-Making (2023)

The TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program's TCRP Synthesis 170: Inclusive Public Participation in Transit Decision-Making documents current, effective, ongoing public participation mechanisms resulting in, and instilling participation from, communities of color; communities with limited English-language proficiency and low-income populations; and people with disabilities.

Promising Practices for Meaningful Public Involvement in Transportation Decision-Making (2022)

The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) developed this guide to help funding recipients meaningfully involve the public in various stages of transportation decision-making and build their organizational capacity to do so. This set of promising practices provides a shared definition of meaningful public involvement and promising practices to help address barriers to inclusion in transportation decision-making.

Community First Toolkit: Embed Equity in All Phases of Park Planning

This toolkit from High Line Network is designed to help park organizations address inequities caused by infrastructural racism, and shape public spaces that bring social, environmental, and economic benefits to our communities.

Virtual Public Involvement: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic (2022)

During the COVID-19 pandemic, transportation agencies' most used public-engagement tools were virtual public meetings, social media, dedicated project websites or webpages, email blasts, and electronic surveys. As the pandemic subsides, virtual and hybrid models continue to provide opportunities and challenges.

The TRB National Cooperative Highway Research Program's NCHRP Web-Only Document 349: Virtual Public Involvement: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic discusses gaps that need to be addressed so that transportation agencies can better use virtual tools and techniques to facilitate two-way communication with the public.

Applying the Safe System Approach to Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety webinar (CPBST, 2022)

In this Focus Cities webinar, the Community Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety Training Program team shares their experiences utilizing the adapted Safe System Approach in their work, resources they have created for the communities they work in, and where they’d like to see the Safe System Approach grow in the future.

Making Equity Real in Climate Adaptation and Community Resilience Policies and Programs: A Handbook (Greenlining Institute, 2019)

Greenlining Institute's Handbook recognizes that in order to prioritize the climate adaptation and community resilience needs of frontline communities and address the historical neglect they have experienced, California must move beyond embracing equity to making it real. This handbook offers policymakers a blueprint on how to operationalize equity in policies and grant programs.

Principles for Equitable Public Outreach and Engagement During COVID-19 and Beyond (Nelson Nygaard, 2019)

Our work in the transportation and planning sector is critical, perhaps now more than ever, to respond and adapt to changing travel demand during the pandemic as well as to help communities recover after it has passed. It is equally critical that we ensure inclusive, equitable, and diverse public outreach and engagement as part of the important decision-making processes ahead—whether for real-time responses to the pandemic, existing projects, or future transportation funding and planning scenarios.

The following guidance is intended to provide fellow transportation sector practitioners and partners with a set of principles for inclusive engagement, including baseline equity criteria to consider when selecting an engagement strategy and accompanying tools whether analogue and/or digital.

Community Walking Club Toolkit (LA DPH)

The Community Walking Club Toolkit is designed to provide individuals, organizations and community groups information on the health benefits of walking, and to encourage and promote the use of physical activity into your daily routine. Each week, you’ll receive a health promotion tip on a different topic related to walking.

Dignity Infused Community Engagement (Vision Zero LA)

The Vision Zero Dignity-Infused Community Engagement (DICE) approach is a cross-sector effort to center community members in the Vision Zero planning process from the beginning; weaving all perspectives and lived experiences into the technical planning process. Vision Zero is the City’s effort to implement policies, programs, and projects that help eliminate traffic-related deaths in Los Angeles. Beyond promoting an initiative, the dignity-infused planning process is an expansive approach to community engagement that seeks to heal and atone for the negative impacts of systems and practices within Los Angeles as well as the broader field of Transportation Planning.

Public Participation Guide (EPA)

This guide provides a primer in public participation. It is designed with government agencies in mind, to help those who must manage processes where public input is important to decision-making. It is organized to provide you with a clear overview of important considerations in the design and implementation of a meaningful public participation program, while incorporating fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, sexual orientation or income.

Equity in Roadway Safety: Engage Community Representatives (FHWA)

FHWA's Equity in Roadway Safety: Engage Community Representatives guide aims to provide the steps needed for transportation practitioners to incorporate the voices of their communities in transportation decision-making and to build trust with members of underserved communities.

Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication (CDC)

The CDC’s Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication are intended to help public health professionals, particularly health communicators, within and outside of CDC ensure their communication products and strategies adapt to the specific cultural, linguistic, environmental, and historical situation of each population or audience of focus.

Advancing Equitable Community-based Transportation Planning

In response to the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while reducing transportation inequities, the California Air Resources Board launched two clean mobility grant programs that fund community transportation needs assessments, planning, and project implementation in disadvantaged communities. This report details an evaluation of these programs, which identified program successes, including meaningful steps to build equity into transportation planning and implementation, and opportunities to develop innovative transportation solutions not ordinarily funded through usual pathways.

Promising Practices to Address Road Safety among People Experiencing Homelessness

This Case Study highlights how State and local transportation agencies and professionals are implementing strategies to address the road safety needs of people experiencing homelessness, a population that experiences significant disparities in roadway fatalities, as part of their work to reach the goal of zero deaths. The Case Study shares information on seven promising practices. Each promising practice includes a description, suggested actions to implement the promising practice, and examples of how State and local transportation agencies are implementing them.