For many, the New Year brings a fresh opportunity to renew a personal commitment to health and well being. With an earnest intention of getting fitter in 2006, millions of Americans will usher in the New Year with a steadfast resolution to join the gym and, unlike years past, to go—really, go—at least 3 times a week for the next 365 days. Determined to make good on their commitments, people will arrive at their local gyms in droves, lock themselves into 1-year contracts, energized by visions of early morning workouts, lunchtime aerobics and power circuits after a long day at the job. But this January, I refuse to become one of them. I will not join the gym. This year, I’ve resolved to keep my money in my pocket because I’m just not ready to face another let down. No matter how committed I am at 12:01AM on the 1st , come late February, my new year’s sweat suit stops screaming to be taken out of the closet, the shine on my gym card dulls, and worst of all, my visits to the gym become fewer and farther between. This year, I’m making a new kind of resolution. In 2006, I’m going to visit my local parks often, use the public playgrounds, and take advantage of the track, the pool, the walking trail and many other great physical activity opportunities that abound right in my own neighborhood.

As a public health professional and coordinator for the Strategic Alliance, a statewide coalition dedicated to making healthy eating and physical activity a realistic option for all Californians, it’s not surprising that I care deeply about physical activity and that I am passionate about working to ensure that others have opportunities to get active. In my work, I’ve learned a lot about what factors influence people’s activity levels. Studies from the health field suggest that we need motivation and social support to engage in activity. Data also indicates that our perceptions of whether our neighborhood is safe influences whether or not we get out and get active. Other research shows that people are more likely to get active if they live within walking distance (1/4 to ½ mile) to parks, playgrounds, and other physical activity settings.

Despite all the available research, what impresses me most, is what I learn when I speak with community groups throughout California. Whether I am in Sacramento, Oakland, Bakersfield, Los Angeles or San Diego, the similarities are remarkable. People are keenly aware that getting physical activity is important for their mental and physical well being, but when they reflect on why they aren’t meeting their goals for activity, common barriers come up time and again. People tell me that they don’t live nearby a park or that their local park doesn’t feel safe. In some places, I’ve heard that lack of sidewalks, poorly maintained sidewalks or cars racing through neighborhoods at unsafe speeds make it impossible to get to the park easily. People tell me there are no good places to walk to and others have told me that the local school is the only ‘good’ place to get physical activity, but it’s closed to them after work and on the weekends. When people are getting active, it is often because they are connected to something—they belong to a club, they’re training for a charity race or their workplace offers a program. Far less frequently I hear about something dynamic happening in a community like a successful ‘joint use’ agreement between the local school and the city or a community-wide exercise program. What all this tells me is that we still have a lot of work to do.

Whether we are health professionals trying to help adults get active for at least 30 minutes a day on most days of the week or Park and Recreation professionals working to ensure that people utilize park and recreation facilities and programs, our mission is unfinished and our mutual success is closely intertwined.

At a basic level, parks and recreation professionals share a common goal with health professionals: To increase active use of park facilities and participation in activity programs. There are many ways we could go about achieving that goal in partnership. Here are five things Public Health and Parks and Recreation professionals can do together:

1. Equalize Access: Use available data to demonstrate where Californians lack convenient access to public parks, playgrounds and other activity settings and advocate for equal access for every California resident.

People are more likely to use their local park and meet goals for physical activity if these settings are conveniently located within reasonable distance (1/4 to ½ mile) from their homes, according to health research. Unfortunately, research also shows that communities with higher poverty rates, and higher proportions of racial and ethnic ‘minorities’ have access to fewer community-level physical activity settings, like parks, pools and playgrounds than more affluent, more White neighborhoods. Residents of those same communities are also more likely to be sedentary, which can lead to a whole host of physical and mental health problem. Health and parks and recreation professionals can reduce disparities in health and park access by improving community access to parks and other physical activity settings. Educating the community about the value of parks and building broad based support for parks, playgrounds and other recreational opportunities is essential for acquiring new resources and infrastructure.

2. Support Operations and Maintenance: Support state and local efforts (through advocacy and education) to operate and maintain existing parks and public activity settings so that people have safe access to indoor and outdoor facilities at times and places that are convenient to children and adults.

In neighborhoods that do have parks and playgrounds, inconvenient hours of operation, concerns about safety (real or perceived) and cleanliness may prevent people from using their local parks. State and local funds are essential for the ongoing operation and upkeep associated with maintaining safe, high quality parks and sustaining the staffing needed to steward parks and other recreation settings. Full funding for operations and maintenance is important for parks and recreation departments but also from a health and safety perspective.

3. Provide community-specific activities: Offer a diversity of culturally and developmentally appropriate physical activity opportunities at locations and times that are accessible to and affordable for children and adults in community settings.

The equipment and programming that is available at each park should reflect the preferred activities and desired uses of the surrounding community. Understanding the physical activities that are most appealing to neighborhood residents is important for maximizing participation. Where helpful, public health officials may collect data that can help parks and recreation staff to understand what kinds of physical activity programs and activities would bring people to the park. Public Health practitioners can also bring residents to park settings by providing services and programming in partnership with parks and recreation agencies. Rather than focusing on stand alone or one- time events, like health fairs, the emphasis of park / health partnerships should be on creating a community environment designed to support and promote daily activity.

4. Emphasize neighborhood-level improvements: Involve local elected officials in developing new and revitalizing existing community activity settings (e.g. trails, walking paths, parks, and playgrounds) that are designed to encourage opportunities for daily activity.

Both Parks and Recreation agencies and Public Health agencies have access to community residents that represent the constituency of local elected officials. Professionals from both fields can organize community residents to define and advocate for the community improvements needed to support physical activity among residents. In some cases, small pots of discretionary funds or dedicated resources can be used to create new infrastructure for activity, such as a community walking path, a fitness par course or to upgrade existing facilities like making a swimming pool compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

5. Create Safe Routes to Parks: Involve community residents, elected officials and transportation agencies in improving access to parks by establishing transit hubs near parks, adding on-street bike lanes, improving road/sidewalk safety around parks and playgrounds, and increasing street signage to increase visibility of parks within the community.

A park, playground, public pool, or a basketball court can be an oasis in any neighborhood, but it shouldn’t be an island. People may have a park in their community but remain cut off from it due to unsafe conditions surrounding the park. High speed traffic, stray dogs, poorly maintained or non-existent sidewalks are just some of the barriers that prevent people from accessing local parks. Using the state and federal Safe Routes to School Program and legislation as models, a new concept ‘Safe Routes to Parks’ could be advanced jointly by Parks and Recreation, Transportation and Health professionals to establish safe passages to local parks and playgrounds.

There are many ways health professionals can work alongside Parks and Recreation Departments to increase active use of park and recreation facilities and maximize participation in activity programs. Examples of community based agencies and public health departments partnering with parks and recreation departments do exist. But, for the most part, these collaborations spark one-time events and sometimes spawn new programming within specific parks. Rarely, do these partnerships have an explicit commitment toward changing neighborhood environments to promote daily activity among community residents.

As a matter of practice in 2006, our collaborations should seek to go further and to build the support to fund, establish and maintain parks, pathways and other essential destinations where residents can congregate, have fun and get active. This is the year to move beyond telling people they need to exercise more and lower their blood sugar—these activities are important, but only if they are connected to meaningful opportunities for people to get active. Parks, playgrounds and other physical activity settings can represent these meaningful opportunities as long as they are available and accessible to everyone. Using the local park needs to become the easy choice.

Where I live in the Crenshaw District of Southwest Los Angeles, I am extremely fortunate to be within reasonable walking distance of several outstanding parks, playgrounds and public facilities. As a result, I’m confident that I’ll be able to follow through on my resolution this year. At Rancho La Cienega, I can swim each morning for fifty cents, participate in water aerobics on the weekends, walk the track with dozens of fellow walkers and joggers, or pick up a game of tennis at the Arthur Ashe courts any day of the week. I can venture south to the newly cleared Stocker Corridor Trail that meets up with Kenneth Hahn State Park where fabulous views of Downtown LA or the Pacific Ocean are my rewards for a brisk uphill climb. Just across the street, dog walkers and kite flyers use Norman O. Houston Park and further down La Brea Avenue, Jim Gilliam Park has a rolling lawn and houses another set of tennis courts to catch the overflow from Rancho.

No doubt, I will face some of the daunting traffic and safety issues that so many others have described to me over the years—and these challenges represent the new frontier for people interested in increasing active participation at the local parks, playgrounds and pools in my neighborhood and others like it throughout California.

For the thousands of California residents who lack convenient access to safe parks and public places to play and get active, public health and park and recreation professionals still have an important job to do. Our commitment in these communities has to be to ensuring equitable access to parks and recreation facilities and to increasing physical activity opportunities there.

So whether we use 2006 and the years ahead to work toward improving access to parks, playgrounds and other physical activity settings in communities that lack them, or we work with communities to overcome barriers to using existing facilities, we can accomplish much more if we build strategic partnerships. Our partnerships will be stronger and more effective if they are designed explicitly with the intention of achieving our shared commitment to increasing active use of park facilities and maximizing participation in activity programs for all Californians.

We would like to thank Jane H. Adams, CPRS Executive Director, for serving on the Strategic Alliance steering committee.

To get more information on these issues, or to join the Strategic Alliance, visit www.eatbettermovemore.org.