Planning

In 1935, as part of the New Deal, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration moved 203 Midwestern families from their economically depressed farms to form the Matanuska Colony in what is now Palmer, Alaska. These agricultural families migrated from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, approximately 45 miles north of Anchorage, 24 years before Alaska became a state. With 40 acres allocated per family, these farming colonists cultivated the land into what is now the heart of Alaska’s agricultural production.

The majority of Americans live in urban or suburban areas, though around 15 percent of Americans live in nonmetropolitan regions, which make up 72 percent of US land. Although the proportion of Americans who are rural residents has recently declined, these communities still comprise 46.1 million Americans (USDA, 2015). When it comes to health outcomes, researchers have identified inequities in rural areas, including higher rates of obesity compared with urban residents and differing levels of physical activity by geographic region (Yousefian et al., 2009; Hansen and Harley, 2015).

Look both ways. Wear your helmet. We’ve all heard these maxims about safety, and probably shared them a time or two.

Aside from distance to school, safety is a leading factor for both adults and children in the decision to participate in physical activity and walk or bike to school (Nasar, 2015; Zhou et al., 2009). However, adopting those individual protective behaviors will not provide an easy solution. This blog post will unpack three reasons why the concept of safety, particularly in the context of safe travel to school, can be challenging to conceptualize and achieve.