This joint presentation will introduce PRANA, a pioneering cross-government initiative linking police, health and other datasets to provide a more complete picture of road collisions and their outcomes through the ‘chain of survival’.

Dr Phil Martin will highlight how PRANA is transforming understanding of road safety by enabling access to over 25 years of linked national data, supporting more robust, evidence-based policy making.

Matthew Tranter (DfT) will present emerging findings from national-scale linkage of STATS19 and Hospital Episode Statistics data, including insights into under-reporting, data quality, variation in injury outcomes across road user groups, and the true burden on healthcare systems. It will also reflect on the opportunities and limitations of current linkage approaches, including challenges around data completeness and validation.

The presentation will conclude with a forward look at PRANA’s future role in supporting cross-sector public health and road safety research and policy development.

Dr Phil Martin, Head of Transport Safety, TRL and Policy, Practice and Partnerships Manager, PRANA

Dr Phil Martin is Head of Transport Safety at TRL and Policy, Practice and Partnerships Manager for PRANA, a flagship initiative linking police, health and other datasets to transform road safety insight.

He works with government, academia and road safety partners to develop transport safety policies for national and local authority, improving understanding of collision outcomes and their wider public health impacts. His work focuses on enabling better use of data to inform evidence-based policy and ultimately reduce road casualties.

Matthew Tranter, Head of Road Safety Statistics, DfT

Matthew Tranter has been the head of the road safety statistics team at DfT for more than five years.

The team is responsible for collating the national police reported collision dataset (STATS19) and for publishing official data and statistics on road casualties via gov.uk, supporting a wide range of stakeholders and uses within and outside the Department.