Resource Library

Availability of public neighborhood parks is associated with physical activity. Little is known about how parks contribute to population energy balance. This study estimated energy expenditure associated with the use of neighborhood parks and compared energy expenditure by activity areas within parks and by neighborhood race/ethnicity and income.

This paper examines parents' responses to key factors associated with mode choices for school trips. The research was conducted with parents of elementary school students in Denver Colorado as part of a larger investigation of school travel.

To successfully stimulate cycling, it is necessary to understand the factors that facilitate or inhibit cycling. Little is known about how changes in the neighborhood environment are related to changes in cycling behavior. This study aimed to identify environmental determinants of the uptake of cycling after relocation.

This article reports on a study that explored the barriers that prevent parents from allowing their children to commute to school. The authors used data from parents of school children in Illinois, U.S., as reported in the National Safe Routes to School Parent Surveys.

This commentary represents a consensus of next actions towards creating built environments that support healthy active living. The policy environment and Canadian evidence are reviewed. Issues and challenges to policy change are discussed.

To make health a decision criterion for the Atlanta BeltLine, a multibillion-dollar transit, trails, parks, and redevelopment project, a HIA was conducted in 2005–2007 to anticipate and influence the BeltLine's effect on health determinants.

To better understand bicyclists’ preferences for facility types, GPS units were used to observe the behavior of 164 cyclists in Portland, Oregon, USA for several days each. Trip purpose and several other trip-level variables recorded by the cyclists, and the resulting trips were coded to a highly detailed bicycle network.

Walking school buses (WSB) increase children’s physical activity, but their impact on pedestrian safety behaviors (PSB) is unknown. To fill this knowledge gap, the authors tested the feasibility of a protocol evaluating changes to PSB during a WSB program.

Thousands of American children under the age of 10 years are injured annually as pedestrians. Despite the scope of this public health problem, knowledge about behavioral control and developmental factors involved in the etiology of child pedestrian safety is limited.

This study investigated this unexplored avenue of research and identified the influences on parental attitudes towards their children walking and bicycling to school, as part of a larger nationwide effort to make children more physically active and combat rising trends of childhood obesity in the US.

The authors compared cycling injury risks of 14 route types and other route infrastructure features. They recruited 690 city residents injured while cycling in Toronto or Vancouver, Canada. A case-crossover design compared route infrastructure at each injury site to that of a randomly selected control site from the same trip.

Researchers examined the extent to which differential traffic volume and road geometry can explain social inequalities in pedestrian, cyclist, and motor vehicle occupant injuries across wealthy and poor urban areas.

This brief summarizes research on community access to school sport and recreational facilities outside of school hours, as well as studies that examine the shared use of school facilities and programs with other community groups or agencies. 

The study analyzed the Japan’s walking-to-school practice implemented in 1953 for lessons useful to other cities and countries.

This report provides information regarding current efforts in the public health community to promote community recreational use of school property to provide safe, affordable and convenient recreational facilities to communities, increase physical activity, and reduce obesity.

This presentation reviews policy and the built environment and the work of the American Heart Association and Public Health Law Center joint efforts to address liability legislatively can work to increase access to physical activity opportunities.

Recreational agreements are becoming a popular strategy that community and school partners can use to increase access to opportunities for physical activity. 

This brief examines the characteristics of joint use agreements that were in effect during the 2009–10 school year among a national sample of 157 public school districts.

This webinar highlights success stories in Colorado and Austin, Texas where a local program teamed up with a bike shop to enhance Safe Routes to School efforts.

This study examined the independent and combined associations between objectively measured time in moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA) and sedentary time with cardiometabolic risk factors.