About

TRB standing committees serve as communities of transportation professionals who have knowledge and interest in the areas included in the committee’s scope. Each committee operates within a scope approved by the Executive Director of TRB.  (TRB Technical Activities Leadership Guide, 2015)

In January 2020, TRB approved a new committee structure that created AME70, a new standing committee on health. This was welcome news for the joint Subcommittee on Health and Transportation, which formed in March 2012. 

Since its inception in 2012, the Health and Transportation Subcommittee was highly productive. Actually, it functioned more like a standing committee and sponsored paper calls, submitted research proposals, reviewed papers, organized and conducted sessions and workshops, and took on special initiatives.

To understand what makes a health committee in TRB unique, consider the situation in which the subcommittee was formed. Starting around 2005, TRB staff began to see annual meeting paper submissions with health-related topics but without a corresponding committee capable of leading the reviews. Behind the scenes, TRB staff established a group of three committee chairs to lead a team of reviewers that served as an ad-hoc review team. This is an example of how the the transportation community recognized that health was emerging as topic that should be considered within the framework of TRB.