Key takeaways:

• Google Street View (GSV) was used to collect, investigate, and characterize images of neighborhood built environments. Computer vision was used to analyze the images and produce key indicators (characteristics of the built environment). The indicators were then examined for their potential influence on chronic disease and health behaviors.
• Indicators of urban development (two or more cars, streetlights, street signs) and walkability (crosswalks, sidewalks, presence of apartment and commercial buildings) were associated with lower chronic health conditions including obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, smoking, poor mental health, and depression.
• Single-lane roads were used as an indicator of lower levels of urban development and correlated with increased chronic conditions in rural areas.
• Chain-link fences were used as an indicator of physical disorder and correlated with poor mental health and depression but also decreased smoking and improved sleep.

On Tuesday, October 25th from 11 am - 12 pm MT, the Colorado Department of Transportation is hosting a free webinar presented by the Safe Routes Partnership

Safe Routes Partnership is hosting a free webinar on Tuesday, October 18th from 2 pm - 3:15 pm ET

On Wednesday, October 19th from 2-3 pm ET the Safe Routes Partnership is hosting the first installment of the Walk, Ride, & Roll Webinar Series, Back to Basics: An Introduction to Safe Routes to School.

Key takeaways:

• Adding sidewalks, stop signs, and bike paths - in neighborhoods, to increase opportunities for physical activity can have unintended social, development, and economic consequences for current residents.
• In low-income neighborhoods, resident concerns about the potential impact on cost of living and being forced from their homes, can become a barrier to changes intended to increase physical activity. Community engagement must be an integral part of projects that improve healthy community design.
• Multidisciplinary collaboration – transportation, housing, health, planning, government - provides the most significant benefit to improving the health and lives of residents in disinvested communities facing revitalization.
• Resident concerns about the impact of revitalization on the cost of living in their neighborhood decreased with increasing age. Concerns increased with increasing education and physical activity levels.
• Neighborhood residents can be simultaneously concerned and supportive of changes in the built environment, especially if the changes will provide increased opportunity for active living.
• New businesses and condominiums caused the most concern for residents, followed by the development of new parks and recreation facilities.

Check out this new publication, Let the Good Vibes Flow: Staying Active and Connected Through Community Walk & Roll Programs, inspired by Healthy Savannah’s community health and wellness initiative.

Safe Routes Partnership is hosting a free webinar on Wednesday, August 10 at 2 pm ET.

The 2022 Making Strides state report cards evaluate each state on key areas for state action to promote and support physical activity. This sheet provides a quick summary of the report cards’ scoring structure, including the indicators and possible points in each of the core topic areas and an example report card showing the different components.

El Diccionario de la Calle es un glosario de terminos del transporte activo desarrollado a lo largo de una década trabajando con hispanohablantes monolingües en todo el estado. 

We’ve developed state report cards which provide a snapshot of how supportive each state is of walking, bicycling, and physical activity for children and adults as of 2022.

We've developed state report cards which provide a snapshot of how supportive each state is of walking, bicycling, rolling, and active kids and communities.

Safe Routes Partnership is hosting a free webinar on Thursday, July 14 at 1 pm ET.

Key takeaways:

• Active travel to school (ATS) increases children’s levels of physical activity. The result is improved overall health in the bones, weight management, cardiovascular fitness, cognition, and mental well-being.
• There is a lack of accessible surveillance data that focuses on ATS or the physical activity of children. The data that is available is maintained at the local level. There is no comprehensive ATS data that would enable use in policy change or programming requirements at the national level.
• The latest data from the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) dates back to 2017. While it contains useful information, such as only ten percent of students were walking or biking to school, and beyond a one-mile distance, only seven percent walk or bike to school, the survey is not conducted at consistent intervals. The last time the survey collected information related to ATS programming was in 2009.
• The authors propose that the NHTS should be built using tools such as global positioning systems (GPS), maps, geographic information systems (GIS), and direct observation. These tools can provide a great deal of information about sidewalk conditions, the presence of bike racks, and other characteristics of walkable, bikeable, and rollable routes.
• Using objectively measured data and on-the-ground perceptions together can guide neighborhood-level action.
• ATS surveillance can contribute to policies and programs that support walkability, bikeability, and rollability in the built environment (e.g. sidewalk maintenance policies, Safe Routes to School programs, etc.).
• Equity can be integrated into local surveillance methods, metrics, and analysis more adeptly due to their smaller, more community-based nature. Rather than approaching barriers to ATS from a state level, neighborhood-level surveillance enables the integration of community perspectives.