From reduced opportunities to travel by bike or foot to a lack of parks and green spaces, our built environment actively contributes to the state of our physical and mental well-being, and nowhere is its negative impact felt more than in Black and Brown communities.
As part of a technical assistance project to help local decision makers understand the needs for better mobility and craft stronger policies, I recently had the opportunity to visit and explore one of the great cities of the Midwest–St. Louis, Missouri. Like most American cities, St. Louis clearly demonstrates the impacts of design that prioritizes high-speed driving and punishes all other forms of mobility.
This December, we continued our webinar series, Complete Streets 301: Putting people first, with a “Complete Streets for Healthy Living.” We welcomed Trust for America’s Health to talk about their new report, State of Obesity 2019, and how active transportation policy at the federal and state levels can improve the health of all Americans. A recording of the webinar with closed captioning is now available. You can also download a PDF of the presentation or read the brief recap below.
The National Complete Streets Coalition is proud to partner with Transportation for America’s Arts & Culture team for our second national Complete Streets conference. Save the date and take part in the movement on April 3-4, 2018 at the Nashville Music City Center.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have released new recommendations to promote physical activity by implementing a combination of transportation and land use interventions. The recommendations stem from the Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF), an independent panel of 15 public health and medical experts appointed by the CDC Director with the objective of identifying evidence-based interventions to improve health and quality of life. The panel includes distinguished doctors, professors, and researchers with expertise in health promotion and disease prevention. They conducted a comprehensive review of 90 studies examining the relationship between the built environment and physical activity to determine how best to promote exercise. Their new recommendations are an important step forward to understanding the linkages between health-related behavior and how we build our towns and cities.
Last week we hosted the first webinar of our new series, Implementation & Equity 201: The Path Forward to Complete Streets. Together with Voices for Healthy Kids and the American Public Health Association, we explored “The Role of Public Health in Complete Streets”. Watch the full video recording of the webinar above, or download the PDF of the presentations.
The National Complete Streets Coalition is just that—a coalition—and our success is made possible by our many partner organizations. Voices for Healthy Kids is the newest member of our Steering Committee and we’re proud to welcome them. We sat down with Stephanie Vaughn, Marketing Manager at Voices for Healthy Kids, to learn more about their work and what drives their commitment to Complete Streets.
April’s arrival brings with it several events that give opportunity to celebrate the Complete Streets movement, as well as space to remember why we’re working for Complete Streets in the first place.