Cobb Safety Village Honored for Innovation, Helping Community

Staff Report

The Cobb County Safety Village and Cobb and Douglas Public Health were recently honored with the Model Practice Award at the 2015 annual conference of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. This award celebrates local public health departments for developing programs that demonstrate exemplary and replicable best practices in response to critical local public health needs.

Cobb County Safety Village’s Interactive Health and Safety Education was one of 19 programs nationwide to receive NACCHO’s prestigious Model Practice Award.

The Cobb Safety Village is the result of a fast-growing youth population who needed education related to health, safety and injury prevention. It is the most comprehensive safety training environment in the Southeast, where residents gain hands-on experience to protect themselves and others from accidental death, injury and destruction of property. Children and adults are engaged in interactive sessions where they correct safety hazards in “Sparky’s House,” evacuate a home “on fire” and ride bikes and drive miniature cars on full-size streets to learn “rules of the road” with Cobb County Public Safety staff.

Cobb and Douglas Public Health hosts a highly interactive public health and safety building filled with learning modules that address home emergency preparedness, immunizations, hand washing and physical activity. In addition, Safe Kids is housed at the Village and provides injury prevention education and car safety seat checks free to residents.

Since the Cobb Safety Village’s inception in 2009, Cobb has seen a drop in fire-related fatalities and structural fires within the community, even with a growing population. Cobb Public Safety, Cobb Public Health and partners are also reaching more students with the same number of staff than in previous years. The number of students able to take part in health and safety training has more than doubled. Evaluation pre- and post-test data from students continue to show a marked increase in scores, which demonstrates better learning and retention of safety information.