March -April 2010 | USC-RPC Notes

“Promoting Health through Physical Activity”

I recently attended the Active Living Research (ALR) conference for the 5th time in 7 years. Jim Sallis, Carmen Cutter, and the entire ALR staff and advisory committee always organize a tremendous meeting with stellar professional presentations mixed with opportunities for physical activity, networking, and fun. Each time I have attended I have learned a ton, and have been amazed at how complex it really is to study the impact of environmental and policy approaches to promoting physical activity. However, without a conference such as this, the intersection of multidisciplinary research and practice would be sorely lagging. To all those involved in any way with the ALR program office, kudos to a job well done over the years! I look forward to being with you again in San Diego in 2011.

Steve Hooker, PhD, Director
http://prevention.sph.sc.edu

IN THIS ISSUE – MARCH-APRIL 2010

NEWS YOU CAN USE: SRTS Mini-Grant Call for Applications; NRPA GIS Project; Grab Your Bike and Go with Google Maps; Spring into Health Month; Walk to Work Day; World Physical Activity Day

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN WASHINGTON: Sustainability Grants for Regional Integrated Planning; Enhancing Livability for All Americans Act; First Lady Michelle Obama: Let’s Move”

RESEARCH NOTES: Using Computer Technology to Battle Heart Disease among Latinos; Communicating Prevention Messages to Policy Makers: The Role of Stories in Promoting Physical Activity; Promoting Sustainable Community Change in Support of Older Adult Physical Activity

REPORTS, SURVEYS, GUIDELINES, RESOURCES: Impact of Parental Attitudes on Children’s Physical Activity; Benchmarking Report on Walking in the U.S; International Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety and Mobility Scan; Cool Pedestrian Environments; Pedestrian, Bicycle, Motorcycle Research Available

PROMOTING ACTIVE COMMUNITIES: Safe Routes Coaching Action Network Seminar: What Does it Take to Get Drivers to Yield? Engineering Measures That Work; Joint Use of Community Resources; “Be Active ’09” Conference

SCHOOLS: Schools Find Ways to Fit In Fitness; Run for Something Better School Awards Program; How Well are Parents Contributing to the Health of Their Children's Schools?; SRTS Local School Project Report Released

UPCOMING CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS: Society of Behavioral Medicine Annual Meeting; 13th Annual Health & Fitness Summit; 3rd International Conference on Physical Activity and Health; 2010 PE4Life Resourve Conference

USC PEVENTION RESEARCH CENTER UPDATES: New Staff Member for Core Research Project; New Project in Spartanburg

NEWS YOU CAN USE:

SRTS MINI-GRANT CALL FOR APPLICATIONS. The National Center for Safe Routes to School is accepting applications for up to 35 $1,000 mini-grants for creative, youth-focused ideas that support safe walking and/or bicycling to school. Eligible activities must occur at an elementary or middle school in Fall 2010 and support the overall goal of SRTS programs -- to enable and encourage children nationwide to safely walk and bicycle to school. These mini-grants encourage communities to get students involved in the effort to foster a culture of walking and bicycling in their own neighborhoods. More info: http://tinyurl.com/yfjvdlp. [Source: CenterLines Issue: 248, March 3, 2010]

NRPA GIS PROJECT: This project’s goal is a future where all parks, trails, and recreation facilities across the nation can be compiled and compared, statistically and graphically on maps, giving you benchmark data to justify your budget, promote your parks, and provide other useful management, planning, marketing, and maintenance data. Its purpose is to have local governments collect consistent information in their GIS systems allowing for better local, regional and statewide management and planning of park and recreation resources. Download this GIS model for a test and give the NRPA your opinion. Read more at http://www.nrpagisdata.org/. [Source: Parks and Recreation Weekly News Brief, January 19, 2010]

GRAB YOUR BIKE AND GO WITH GOOGLE MAPS. Google has added biking directions in the U.S. to Google Maps. This allows cyclists to map their commutes and plan recreational or trail rides. This new feature includes: step-by-step bicycling directions; bike trails outlined directly on the map; and a new "Bicycling" layer that indicates bike trails, bike lanes, bike-friendly roads avoiding hilly terrain whenever possible. Simply enter a start point and destination and select "Bicycling" from the drop-down menu. [Source: League of American Bicyclists Press Release, March 10, 2010]

SPRING INTO HEALTH MONTH, April 1-30, 2010, http://www.aicr.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=13281

WALK TO WORK DAY, April 2, 2010; http://walking.about.com/od/pedestrians/p/walktoworkday.htm

WORLD PHYSICAL ACTIVITY DAY. April 6, 2010, http://prevention.sph.sc.edu/PAlinks/index.htm

For a list of PA related observances and events, visit the PA links section of our website at http://prevetion.sph.sc.edu/PAlinks/index.htm.

WHAT'S HAPPENING IN WASHINGTON:

SUSTAINABILITY GRANTS FOR REGIONAL INTEGRATED PLANNING. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has issued an Advanced Notice of their intention to offer funding through the Sustainable Communities Planning Grant Program (http://preview.tinyurl.com/ybsggjx). The Notice of Funding Availability will be published the week of April 12 and applications for funding will be due around the first week of June. Grant recipients are expected to be announced in early August. For more information and to submit comments, visit www.hud.gov/sustainability.

ENHANCING LIVABILITY FOR ALL AMERICANS ACT OF 2009. H.R. 4287 was introduced last month and would move the newly created Office of Livability from Federal Highways to the office of the Secretary of Transportation. Supported by both Secretary LaHood and advocates for pedestrians and cyclists, the bill proposes competitive grant programs for multimodal transportation planning and projects, and disseminates best practices on complete streets and similar strategies. It will encourage walkable communities, provide money for planning and projects that support walking and become a clearing house for Complete Streets best practices. [Source: America Walks Monthly E-Newsletter, January 2010]

FIRST LADY MICHELLE OBAMA: “LET’S MOVE.” America’s Fist Lady is bringing unprecedented attention to the issues of healthy eating and physical activity. Mrs. Obama refers to environmental approaches, from building sidewalks and creating safe neighborhoods to supporting farmers markets and decreasing food industry marketing to children. (View her speech here.) "Let's Move" focuses on four key areas:

Offering parents tools and information needed to make
better decisions about children's nutrition.
Getting healthier foods in schools.
Improving accessibility and affordability of healthy foods.
Physical activity--increasing opportunities for kids to play and move.

[Source: Strategic Alliance Rapid Response Alert, February 9, 2010]

RESEARCH NOTES:

USING COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY TO BATTLE HEART DISEASE AMONG LATINOS. Many promising technology-based programs designed to promote healthy behaviors such as physical activity and healthy eating have not been adapted for use with diverse communities, including Latino communities. The authors designed a community-based health kiosk program for English- and Spanish-speaking Latinos. Users receive personalized feedback on nutrition, physical activity, and smoking behaviors from computerized role models that guide them in establishing goals in 1 or more of these 3 areas. The authors found significant improvements in nutrition and physical activity among 245 Latino program users; however, no changes were observed with respect to smoking behaviors. The program shows promise for extending the reach of chronic disease prevention and self-management programs. Leeman-Castillo, Beaty, Raghunath, Steiner, Bull. “LUCHAR: Using computer technology to battle heart disease among Latinos.” American Journal of Public Health, 100(2), 272-275, 2010.

COMMUNICATING PREVENTION MESSAGES TO POLICY MAKERS: THE ROLE OF STORIES IN PROMOTING PHYSICAL ACTIVITY. To improve the translation of evidence into policy, researchers and public health practitioners need to consider new ways for communicating health promoting messages to state and local policymakers. The authors describe issues related to the translation of evidence supporting physical activity promotion, and offer some communication approaches and tools that are likely to be beneficial in translating research to policy. They discuss the use of narrative (ie, stories) and describe its potential role in improving communication of research in policy-making settings. In addition, they provide an outline for the development and design of policy briefs on physical activity, and for how to target these briefs effectively to policy-oriented audiences. Stamatakis, McBride, Brownson. “Communicating prevention messages to policy makers: the role of stories in promoting physical activity.” Journal of Physical Activity and Health, 7(1), S99-1072010.

PROMOTING SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY CHANGE IN SUPPORT OF OLDER ADULT PHYSICAL ACTIVITY. This article reports results of a community-organizing approach to disseminating evidence-based interventions in a sustainable way: The Southeast Seattle Senior Physical Activity Network (SESPAN). The SESPAN organizing strategy involved networking to: (1) make connections between two or more community organizations to create new senior physical activity programs; and (2) build coalitions of community groups and organizations to assist in making larger scale environmental and policy changes to increase senior physical activity. Networking among organizations led to the creation of 16 ongoing exercise classes and walking groups, serving approximately 200 older adults in previously underserved Southeast Seattle communities. In addition, the project's health coalition is sustaining current activities and generating new programs and environmental changes. Cheadle, Egger, LoGerfo et al. “Promoting Sustainable Community Change in Support of Older Adult Physical Activity: Evaluation Findings from the Southeast Seattle Senior Physical Activity Network (SESPAN).” Journal of Urban Health, 87, 67-75 2010.

For additional summaries of recent research on promoting physically active lifestyles, visit the Research Updates section of our website at http://prevention.sph.sc.edu/updates/index.htm.
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REPORTS, SURVEYS, GUIDELINES, RESOURCES:

IMPACT OF PARENTAL ATTITUDES ON CHILDREN’S PHYSICAL ACTIVITY. How much does the value parents place on physical activity influence their children’s attitude and participation? A recent study by Anderson, Hughes, and Fuemmeler looked at parental beliefs about specific types and intensities of physical activity and their relationship to children’s physical activity and sedentary behavior. The study involved 433 Houston Texas children in 4th and 5th grade and their parents. Read more at http://www.cflri.ca/eng/research_file/documents/ResearchFile_February_FinalENG.pdf

[Source: Summary from the Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research Institute and ParticipACTION, issued February 2, 2010]

BENCHMARKING REPORT ON WALKING IN THE U.S. Bicycling and Walking in the United States: The 2010 Benchmarking Report, has been released by the Alliance for Biking & Walking. The report is nearly 200 pages on the state of bicycling and walking in America and in 50 states and the 51 largest cities. The report is full of data tables and graphs so you can see how your state or city stacks up. Inside you will find unprecedented statistics to help support your case for increasing safe bicycling and walking in your community. [National Complete Streets Coalition, February 17, 2010]

INTERNATIONAL PEDESTRIAN AND BICYCLE SAFETY AND MOBILITY SCAN. Lessons from Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom have been assembled in the final report for the 2009 International Scan on Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety and Mobility. The report describes how these countries have made walking and bicycling safer and more convenient through policy, engineering, education, and other strategies. The team learned that many of the countries studied have established an urban street user hierarchy that gives the highest priority to walking, biking, and public transit. [Source: Complete Streets News, March 2010]

COOL PEDESTRIAN ENVIRONMENTS. Transportation consulting firm Fehr & Peers, a Complete Streets Partner, has established a web-based resource for pedestrian planning, design, and safety documents and links to other resources. The site covers topics like ADA accommodations, master planning, grant writing, training, and complete streets. [Source: Complete Streets News, March 2010]

PEDESTRIAN, BICYCLE, MOTORCYCLE RESEARCH AVAILABLE. Twenty-four papers that explore pedestrian, bicyclist, and motorcyclist research and issues are now available from the Transportation Research Board. [Source: Complete Streets News, March 2010]

PROMOTING ACTIVE COMMUNITIES:

SAFE ROUTES COACHING ACTION NETWORK SEMINAR: WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET DRIVERS TO YIELD? ENGINEERING MEASURES THAT WORK. On Tuesday, March 30, 2010 from 2:00-3:00 pm, there will be a Webinar that will address problems that many schools and neighborhoods have in finding ways to control and slow traffic in areas where pedestrians cross streets. Engineering experts will share knowledge and understanding of pedestrian safety and traffic control devices. For more information please contact Michelle Gulley, at mgulley@americawalks.org. Register at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/728334985. [Source: National Center for Safe Routes to School Bulletin, received March 3, 2010]

JOINT USE OF COMMUNITY RESOURCES: “Joint Use” is a way to increase opportunities for children and adults to be more physically active. It refers to two or more entities — usually a school and a city or private organization — sharing indoor and outdoor spaces like gymnasiums, athletic fields, pools, and playgrounds. The concept is simple: share resources to keep costs down and communities healthy. To read more about “joint use” and how and where it is already working, go to http://www.jointuse.org/about/about-joint-use/. [Source: Prevention Institute Alert, January 21, 2010]

“BE ACTIVE ’09” CONFERENCE: The Journal of Science and medicine in Sport (Volume 12, Supplement 2, pages e1-e232) has published abstracts from the October 2009 sports medicine, sports science, sports injury, and physical activity promotion conference, “Be Active '09” that was held in Brisbane, Australia. This conference brought together some of the finest speakers from Australia and around the world to present a comprehensive scientific forum on all facets of these fields - from elite performance to community participation in sport, physical activity and their impact on individual and public health. To access all of these abstracts, go to http://preview.tinyurl.com/yajldle. [Source: AusPANet News, Feb 12]

SCHOOLS

SCHOOLS FIND WAYS TO FIT IN FITNESS. First Lady Michelle Obama recently announced her plans to fight childhood obesity that include the goal of 60 minutes of physical activity daily for school children. Illinois, with the nation's fourth-highest childhood obesity level, requires schools to offer daily physical education. But most public schools in Chicago offer it only once a week. 22 Chicago-area elementary schools have implemented” Stretch-N-Grow,” an in-class fitness program. It and other efforts that offer dancing, yoga and cardio training to Chicago Public Schools students help augment — or are a substitute for — physical education programs. More. [Source: NRPA Weekly News Brief, March 2, 2010]

RUN FOR SOMETHING BETTER SCHOOL AWARDS PROGRAM. ING Run For Something Better, in partnership with the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE), seeks to increase physical activity in students and help fight childhood obesity nationwide through the creation of school-based running programs. The school awards program will provide (50) $2,000 grants to schools that desire to establish a school-based running program or expand an existing one. Awards are available to programs that target grades 4th through 8th in public elementary or middle schools. Click Here for more information. Deadline: April 15, 2010. [Source: SPARK E-Newsletter, January, 2010]

HOW WELL ARE PARENTS CONTRIBUTING TO THE HEALTH OF THEIR CHILDREN'S SCHOOLS? Action for Healthy Kids has launched a new project to get parents more involved in their children's health and motivated to help create a healthy school environment. Schools still struggle to involve parents, a vast and virtually untapped resource. This new project, Parents CATCH onto Wellness, will recruit and train parents to be key players in the comprehensive school health model, measure the impact of their involvement, and identify and promote best practices for leveraging their help. . Read More. [Source: CATCH News: January 2010, Vol 4, Issue 4]

SRTS LOCAL SCHOOL PROJECT REPORT RELEASED: The Safe Routes to School National Partnership, in collaboration with UC Berkeley's Safe Transportation Research and Education Center and PPH Partners released a report at the Active Living Research Conference in San Diego, CA. “Safe Routes to School - Local School Project: A health evaluation at 10 low-income schools” indicates that there is good progress toward achieving some amount of policy and environmental change in support of walking and bicycling. Additionally, nine out of ten schools had successful walk/bicycle educational and encouragement activities. Read more at http://tinyurl.com/yzolpdv. [Source: CenterLines Issue 247, February 17, 2010]

UPCOMING CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS:

SOCIETY OF BEHAVIORAL MEDICINE ANNUAL MEETING, 4/7/2010 - 4/10/2010, Seattle, WA. http://www.sbm.org/

13TH ANNUAL HEALTH & FITNESS SUMMIT, 4/7/2010 - 4/10/2010, Austin, TX
http://preview.tinyurl.com/5unah6

3RD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AND HEALTH, 5/5/2010 - 5/8/2010; Toronto, Canada. http://www.cflri.ca/icpaph/en/index.php

2010 PE4LIFE RESOURCE CONFERENCE. If you are interested in presenting at the conference (10/4/2010 - 10/5/2010), submit your proposal to Carrie Gibson by April 2nd.

For a more complete list of conferences and workshops, visit the PA links section of our website at http://prevention.sph.sc.edu/PAlinks/index.htm.

USC PRC UPDATES:
NEW STAFF MEMBER FOR CORE RESEARCH PROJECT. Sylvia Flint, MSPH is a Community Development Specialist who has joined the PRC community intervention staff, to be housed in our partnering community of Sumter, SC. Sylvia will provide community advocacy and leadership skills training, technical assistance and mentoring to assist community representatives enhance their effectiveness at creating an active community environment. She will work closely with both PRC researchers and community-based community coalition members in Sumter.

NEW PROJECT IN SPARTANBURG. In collaboration with Partners for Active Living and Furman University, the USC PRC will assist with a newly funded 3-year project to increase awareness and use of two urban trails in Spartanburg County, SC. Funded by the Mary Black Foundation, the project will entail implementing several programs to introduce nearby residents to the trails and position the trails as valued community assets, and conducting ongoing evaluation of trail use.

Writers: Marsha Stepp, Jorge Banda

This and past issues of the “University of South Carolina Prevention Research Center Notes” are available on our website at http://prevention.sph.sc.edu/Newsletter/index.htm.

To submit an item, please e-mail Marsha Stepp at mstepp@mailbox.sc.edu.

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For continuing discussions about physical activity, join the Physical Activity and Public Health On-Line Network listserv. Instructions are located on our website, at http://prevention.sph.sc.edu/newsletter/commands.htm.

The USC Prevention Research Center is a member of the CDC Prevention Research Center's National Network, consisting of 33 Centers in the U.S. For more information about the PRC National Network, visit http://www.cdc.gov/prc.

Prevention Research Center
Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina
921 Assembly Street, Columbia, South Carolina 29208
803-777-4253

This publication was supported by Cooperative Agreement Number 5-U48-DP-000051 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the CDC.

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