Saving Young Lives on the Road: The Vital Role, Pathways, and Impact of U.S. CPST Training in LMICs
Thursday, October 22, 2026 @ 1 p.m.
Description: This presentation explores the critical role of Certified Child Passenger Safety Technicians (CPSTs) and the pathway to certification, with a special focus on low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). It underscores the urgent need to train more advocates in these settings to reduce child injuries and fatalities and highlights the importance of continuing initiatives such as the CPST training course supported by AAAM and held in conjunction with this conference.
Focusing on LMICs, the presentation examines why many advocates travel to the United States to become certified as CPSTs despite substantial barriers—including significant time commitments, high costs, visa requirements, and the need for English proficiency. It also explores how the global CPST workforce, though trained on a U.S.-based curriculum, often operates very differently from the U.S. model because of distinct legal, cultural, and regulatory challenges in LMICs. Despite these obstacles, CPSTs across LMICs continue to advance safer transportation for children.
The presentation will also feature the CPST training course held in Costa Rica in conjunction with the AAAM conference and its local and global impact. It will share personal stories from instructors, instructor candidates, and newly certified technicians; present data from the car seat check event conducted on the final day of the course; and demonstrate how AAAM’s support of this training represents a unique and essential contribution to the shared mission of saving lives and eliminating road traffic injuries. Beyond advancing scientific research and policy recommendations, this initiative exemplifies the value of collaborating directly with the local communities that host our conference and empowering their future child passenger safety advocates.
Speaker: Karla Barrios is a Certified Child Passenger Safety Technician (CPST) based in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico, with a background in Educational Intervention and Management. Her passion for child passenger safety began with motherhood, when she experienced firsthand the limited access to reliable, evidence-based information on child restraints available to families in Mexico. Her work focuses on translating evidence into education by developing curricula and delivering courses and training for pediatricians, healthcare professionals, and families. She has conducted diagnostic assessments of child passenger safety needs in Mexico and collaborated with child restraint manufacturers to adapt user manuals and guidance to the Mexican market. As the founder of Abrazo Seguro, her work focuses on building capacity through collaboration, professional education, awareness-building, curriculum development, and community education for families across Mexico and Latin America.
Speaker: Heidi D. Heflin, MN, RN, CPST-I, is a nationally recognized Child Passenger Safety (CPS) Technician Instructor with over a decade of clinical, educational, and consulting expertise. Based in Redondo Beach, California, she holds a Master’s in Pediatric Nursing from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her work focuses on advancing safe transportation practices for children worldwide through networking, education, program development, and professional training.
Currently, Heidi serves as Program Consultant for the California Department of Public Health’s Vehicle Occupant Safety Program promoting the implementation of a statewide CPS standard of care throughout California healthcare facilities. She previously consulted with the U.S. based non-profit SafetyBeltSafe U.S.A.
A national and international speaker, Heidi has presented at major CPS and nursing conferences. She is a published author in the Journal of Perinatal and Neonatal Nursing and has written extensively for National Association of Neonatal Nurses and other professional outlets on topics such as safe transportation of neonates from hospitals, nurse knowledge of CPS, and integrating child passenger safety into healthcare practice.
Heidi remains active in the global CPS community as a curriculum reviewer for CPST technician manuals, moderator of the Global CPS Facebook group, and CPS In Healthcare Google Group. Her other volunteer work is in Sinaloa, Mexico, where she is the founder and Clinic Director of the LIGA International Flying Doctors of Mercy Children’s Mobility Clinic, San Blas.
Through her dual expertise in pediatric nursing and child passenger safety, Heidi continues to bridge clinical care and injury prevention, equipping CPS advocates worldwide with the knowledge and tools to ensure every child rides safely.