Advocacy update: linking health to parks and recreation: communities need to promote health and wellness to improve quality of life.

NRPA has a long history of working on health and wellness promotion in communities across America. Many individuals are beginning to appreciate and understand the role of parks and recreation in promoting healthy lifestyles. Our spaces provide access for individuals of every age, ability and income level to increase their daily amount of physical activity. Park and recreation programs facilitate multiple opportunities for people to learn about proper nutrition, to engage in active recreation and to find balance in their life.

At the same time, public health professionals have been developing innovative surveillance and research methods to determine how to positively impact the health of the greatest number of people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) primary mission is to reduce health risks at all stages of life through the most efficient and effective means. CDC's second health protection goal is to ensure that the places we live, work and play have safe, healthy environments.

NRPA's core mission corresponds and compliments the primary mission of the CDC. Both fields promote health and wellness as a key means of enhancing the quality of life for the greatest number of people.

Cooper Institute Conference: "Parks, Recreation and Public Health: Collaborative Frameworks for Promoting Physical Activity"

Recently, NRPA co-sponsored a scientific conference at the Cooper Institute to discuss practical issues that advance cross-disciplinary opportunities in public health, parks and recreation. Parks and recreation and public health have shared some common goals, but these disciplines have not had adequate opportunity for discourse. These missed opportunities have resulted in an incomplete understanding of the spectrum of shared issues and a distinct disconnect in how we broadly apply our knowledge base.

For years, the CDC has strongly recommended strategies for creating, or improving access to, places for physical activity combined with informational outreach as a way to increase the number of individuals who achieve physical activity goals. Park and recreation resources should help inform these strategies. This is why we are working to reposition our field to become a recognized health asset at every scientific conference and in almost every community in America.

Proving the Health Benefits Garnered from Public Land

An important step in connecting the value of public land acquisition and park development with the justification to receive federal funding is to demonstrate and prove health benefits garnered from public land. Proving that a park has received public funding support is only one tiny piece of the scientific pie.

We must also prove that individuals will be more likely to get their daily dose of physical activity if they have access to a park and that they will, in fact, use a park resource if it is made available to them. We have long passed the fiscal climate where park and recreation professionals can build a park, expand a trail or improve upon a recreational facility and leave it up to the public to use it.

We must figure out a way to track and evaluate how the health of the users of our facilities, spaces and programs improves during time. We need to evaluate participation rates, durations of use or enrollment numbers. The key is to engage with the public health community to learn the most effective surveillance methods.

We have been hearing from federal policymakers for several years now that we need to demonstrate the results of our initiatives. Indeed, when the Land and Water Conservation Fund State Assistance program received a rating of "results not demonstrated" in an analysis, we began to scratch our heads to figure out exactly what results we needed to demonstrate in the first place. Correlating the public health benefits achieved from the physical presence of an outdoor recreational venue is our challenge.

The challenge is to determine the long-term health and economic benefits associated with access to public park and recreation resources. We can begin by first identifying what knowledge is needed by community service providers and public health specialists, so that we can successfully execute a collaborative framework to address physical inactivity on a community scale.

To do this, we need to work with the public health community to integrate our needs into the surveillance systems that they are already deploying. Public health surveillance systems, such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), School Health Policies and Programs Study (SHPPS), Youth Media Campaign Longitudinal Survey (YMCLS), Youth Risk Behavioral Surveillance System (YRBSS) and National Household Transportation Survey (NHTS), can monitor the precursors of changes in physical activity behaviors as they correlate with various alterations in the built environment brought on by development or policy decisions.

Building Momentum on the Local Level

There is a pressing need for the park and recreation field to disseminate our most promising practices so that those in the public health community can learn of our successes in improving the health and wellness of individuals. NRPA has been working to lay the groundwork within our field, and to bridge the knowledge gap between our disciplines and those within public health. But our success as a national organization is carried and directed by the amazing work that local departments are engaging in around the country. We need to hear more about how you evaluate your programs and monitor your progress so others can replicate your achievements.

We will be showcasing community based initiatives at our Health and Livability Summit in April 2007. Departments from around the country will describe how they have expanded opportunities for public engagement in healthy behaviors through the use of park and recreation resources. The summit will bring together a diverse group of national organizations with park and recreation leaders to develop a call to action. This will spur collaboration across public, private and nonprofit institutions to advance community health and develop mechanisms to ensure livable communities.

The National Health and Livability Summit will be a three-day event that marks the culmination of years of work to advance healthy lifestyles. We anticipate that it will also launch a paradigm shift in how health outcomes are achieved on a community scale.

ACTION ALERT

Promote the benefits of parks and recreation to achieve national goals for healthy lifestyles by becoming an advocate at NRPA's National Legislative Forum on Parks and Recreation on Feb. 14-16 in Washington, D.C. For more information visit www.nrpa.org/forum.

Help NRPA establish a national framework for public health and park and recreation collaboration at NRPA's Health and Livability Summit on April 17-19 in Atlanta, Ga. For more information visit www.nrpa.org/healthsummit.

Monica Hobbs Vinluan, J.D., is the senior policy associate for NRPA's Public Policy division and can be contacted at [e-mail].