The Child Health Initiative (CHI) is an informal collaboration of organisations, coordinated by the FIA Foundation, committed to advocating for the rights of children and adolescents to safe and sustainable mobility, and working together through an Advocacy Hub to implement and promote practical solutions.

The Initiative successfully advocated for the inclusion of specific policy on safe and healthy journeys to school in the UN’s New Urban Agenda, and has led successful advocacy for a first ever UN Youth Summit.

The current members of the Initiative include: UNICEF; the World Health Organization; UN Environment Programme; Overseas Development Institute (ODI); Save the Children; World Resources Institute (WRI) ; Institute for Transport and Development Policy (ITDP); Safe Kids Worldwide; Global Road Safety Partnership; NACTO; The George Institute; Bernard van Leer Foundation; Amend; Asia Injury Prevention (AIP) Foundation; Eastern Alliance for Safe & Sustainable Transport (EASST); International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP); Gonzalo Rodriquez Foundation; US National Center for Safe Routes to School; Clean Air Asia; and Fondation Botnar.

Each day millions of children worldwide face the risk of road traffic injury and are forced to breathe dangerously toxic air. Every year, an estimated 250,000 children and adolescents die in road traffic crashes and a similar number die from the effects of urban outdoor air pollution, to which road traffic is a significant contributor and factor. Road traffic is now the leading cause of death for children over the age of five and for adolescents, worldwide.

The Child Health Initiative campaigns in support of the SDG agenda to transform our streets and halve global road deaths through the 2030 Manifesto, which demands that:

Every child and adolescent can expect a safe and healthy journey to school;
Streets where children mix with traffic have a default speed limit of no more than 30km/h;
Every urban street has a viable footpath and protected at-grade crossings;
Every city has set an ambitious target for protected cycle lanes; and
A global adolescent summit to prioritise SDG action on adolescent health and rights.

The CHI Toolkit to support and enable the delivery of ‘safe and healthy journey to school’ interventions. It brings together proven solutions and tools to combat road traffic injury and ensure our children breathe clean air. The solutions are readily available and affordable, bringing results that are measurable. The toolkit is an introductory guide with step-by-step guidance to assess the current situation of roads and air pollution, design an appropriate intervention, and work with others to ensure a lasting impact. It is designed to support a range of organisations, including NGOs, international agencies, public authorities and their partners, which are aiming to create a safe environment for children, to protect them from air pollution and prevent child road traffic injury. The four sections are focused around major themes that are important to consider, and provide a summary of key information, real world examples and links to further information to explore.