Streetsblog New York City

What if cars came with a Surgeon General’s warning like the ones that come on cigarette packs: “Sitting in this seat could lead to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, depression, and divorce.”

The Surgeon General wants your help to get more people to walk for exercise and transportation. Photo: Digital Deconstruction

Surgeon General Regina Benjamin is getting ready to go halfway there. She announced in December that she’d be issuing a call to action on walking sometime in 2014. Yesterday, she and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked for help crafting the call.

The CDC opened a docket yesterday to solicit information from the public “on walking as an effective way to be sufficiently active for health.” That information will be used as part of the call to action.

The wording is notable. The CDC is making the case that even if walking is the only exercise you do, it could be “sufficient” to stay healthy.  It echoes the recent findings of Australian researchers, who concluded that going to the gym isn’t as effective as active transportation at keeping weight off – largely because it’s easier to work exercise into your day when it accomplishes two goals at once.

What the CDC is trying to do is identify not only what government agencies can do, but what civic organizations, health care providers, educational institutions, worksites, industry, and others can do to provide access to “safe, attractive and convenient places to walk (and wheelchair roll).”

The CDC is off to a good start even before the public chimes in with its collective wisdom. The request for public comment laid out the scope of the problem:
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Going to the gym may not be enough to keep off the pounds if you drive to work. That’s the result of a study published recently in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Bike commuters gain less weight than car commuters, an Australian study found. Image: Bikes Belong

According to an Australian research team, active commuting is an effective defense against gaining weight. Among a sample of 822 Australian adults tracked over four years, people who walked or biked to work gained about two pounds less, on average, than daily car commuters.

Lead researcher Takemi Sugiyama, a behavioral epidemiologist at Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Melbourne, said it may be difficult for people who drive to work to find the extra time to devote to exercise.

“In order to achieve the level of physical activity needed to prevent weight gain, it may be more realistic to accumulate physical activity through active transport, rather than adding exercise to weekly leisure-time routines,” she told the Health Behavior News Service, part of the Center for Advancing Health.

The study found that engaging in “sufficient leisure-time physical activity” also helped people avoid weight gain, but that car commuters who exercised regularly in their free time still put on more pounds than active commuters.

Street conditions, of course, will have to improve to make active commuting a viable option for more people in the U.S. “For most Americans, it is challenging to find a safe route to work or shopping due to factors such as traffic concerns, lack of sidewalks, or protected bike paths,” said Penny Gordon-Larsen, a public health expert at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told the Health Behavior News Service.

Hat tip to Jay Walljasper at Bikes Belong for bringing this to our attention.

Is your neighborhood designed to make people healthy or sick? With the right characteristics, the place where you live could add years to your life.

Children in Redondo Beach, California -- a Blue Zone community -- take part in morning exercises. LA Times

In 2004, Dan Buettner, CEO of the Blue Zones Project, partnered with researchers from National Geographic to study the places around the world that enjoy the greatest longevity. They found that what distinguishes places like Ikaria, Greece, and Okinawa, Japan, are environments and cultural attributes that foster community, family life, connectedness, and physical activity.

The team boiled down their research to nine principles for longevity and health. The number one principle? “Move Naturally.”

“The world’s longest-lived people don’t pump iron, run marathons or join gyms,” the researchers wrote. “Instead, they live in environments that constantly nudge them into moving without thinking about it.”

Now the Blue Zones Project — run by Healthways, a company focused on improving health, in partnership with AARP, Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, and the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute — is trying to create cities and towns that promote wellness across the U.S.

More than a dozen places, from the Los Angeles suburbs to small-town Iowa, have been designated as “Blue Zone” communities. The partnership is helping these places advance complete streets, walking school buses, and safe routes to school. The program also focuses on goals like gardening, volunteering, smoking cessation, and providing access to fresh food.

“Seventy percent of our health outcomes are predicted by our behaviors and our environment,” said Laura Jackson of Wellmark, which insures 2 million people in Iowa and South Dakota, during a seminar at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference taking place this week in Kansas City. “We searched around the world to try to find the magic bullet.”

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Walking can seem like a rather mundane thing to get organized about, until you realize that it’s a direct challenge to car-oriented transportation and it’s the best thing people can do for their health. Then walking is downright revolutionary.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin exhorted advocates this morning to make walking "joyful." Photo: Tanya Snyder

Not only that, but it can be joyful. That was the message that the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Regina Benjamin, brought to a gathering of walking advocates in Washington today. “We have to make being healthy joyful,” she said.

“One person’s joy might be to run a marathon,” she said. “Another person’s is just fit into an old pair of jeans. And another’s is just to sit up all day with their grandkids. We have to stop telling people what they can’t do or what they can’t eat. We have to tell them what they can do. They can go out for walks. They can go out with their friends.”

When Benjamin was nominated to her post, she was immediately barraged with questions about her own weight. Critics said it was inappropriate to have a full-figured person as the leading public health official in a country that struggles with a 36 percent obesity rate. But Dr. Benjamin’s message is, “If I can do it, anyone can do it.”

Benjamin recounted a tale of a friend of hers finding out she liked walking and inviting her to go on a walk – to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. She said she huffed and puffed her way back up the 4,000 feet of altitude change, but it was fun. “But you don’t have to have a national park,” she said. “You just have your street outside your house.”

The CDC is going to produce a Surgeon General’s report that is “a call to action on walking.” That’ll be accompanied by a national campaign for walking. “We want to lend the voice of the Office of the Surgeon General to this particular physical activity,” she said. “It’s easy to do, anyone can do it and it’s fun.”

She told Streetsblog after her remarks that it will, realistically, take 18 months to launch the call to action.

Benjamin’s commitment to walking as an inclusive form of physical exercise dovetails nicely with First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign, which also embraces biking and walking as a good way for young people to work physical activity into their day. And not only that: Dr. Benjamin ended her speech by thanking the walking advocates in the room for “implementing the Affordable Care Act’s prevention strategy.”

A British national health authority is advising UK residents to make walking and cycling the norm for short trips, in order to reduce the risk of chronic diseases associated with the nation’s obesity epidemic.

Inactivity poses greater risks than cycling, says one leading British medical expert. Photo: The Guardian

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence issued a 97-page report Wednesday on the topic with a number of recommendations. The National Health Service reports that 26 percent of British people are obese, while in America the figure is 35.7 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

The researchers recommends biking and walking as the best way to integrate more activity into the daily lives of British people, and they’re pressuring government officials to get to work on making active transportation a more attractive choice, according to the Guardian.

The report urges local governments to install more complete bicycle infrastructure, help schools establish “walking buses,” and encourage employers to create programs aimed at helping staff members drive less.

“We all face barriers in changing our lifestyles and many of us feel we don’t have the time or the inclination to add regular physical activity into our lives,” Dr. Harry Rutter, an obesity researcher who led the study for NICE, told the Guardian. “But walking and cycling – to work, to school, to the shops or elsewhere – can make a huge difference. It’s an opportunity to make these activities part of normal, routine daily behavior.”

Dr. Rutter has had to defend cycling from worrywarts who questioned whether the activity is too dangerous.

“This focus on the dangers of cycling is something to do with the visibility of them, and the attention it’s given,” he said. “What we don’t notice is that if you were to spend an hour a day riding a bike rather than being sedentary and driving a car there’s a cost to that sedentary time. It’s silent, it doesn’t get noticed. What we’re talking about here is shifting the balance from that invisible danger of sitting still towards the positive health benefits of cycling.”

Researchers report that inactivity in the UK is as big a public health problem as smoking. According to their metrics only one in four British women, and one in three men, are getting enough exercise to live healthy lives.

Based on NYPD crash data and media reports, it appears that a toddler who was hit by a driver in the Bronx earlier this year soon died from his injuries.

No charges were filed against the driver of this SUV, who struck a 2-year-old boy in Parkchester in March. The crash was recorded as a pedestrian fatality by NYPD. Photo: Daily News

On March 27 at around 4:40 p.m., a 2-year-old boy was chasing after an ice cream truck on Taylor Avenue in Parkchester when he was struck by an SUV driven by a 73-year-old woman, according to the Daily News and DNAinfo. The stories did not identify the child, who suffered a head injury and was initially hospitalized in critical condition, and Streetsblog could find no subsequent media coverage of the crash.

The crash occurred in the 43rd Precinct, which reported one pedestrian fatality in March. According to the March NYPD crash data report, the fatality happened on Taylor Avenue near the Cross Bronx Expressway, which matched the location cited by the Daily News. The vehicle involved in the crash was identified by NYPD as an SUV or station wagon.

The child was said to have been “thrown several feet into the air,” and a witness indicated to the News that the driver may have been speeding. But there is no sign that police or prosecutors pursued charges.

“You could tell she was going too fast,” said area resident Algeny Capellan, 30. “When you see an ice cream truck, you gotta slow down.

“I feel sorry for her, too,” she said of the driver.

The driver remained on the scene and was taken to the 43rd Precinct stationhouse for questioning.

Criminal charges were not expected to be filed, police sources said.

Likewise, five hours after the crash DNAinfo reported that “no criminality was suspected.”

“This is terrible,” Ralph Luchiano, a neighbor, told the News. “They go too fast down this street.” A month earlier, a livery cab driver slammed into a home a short distance away on Taylor Avenue, the second motorist to hit the same house in two years.

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Because of its proximity to Central Park, you might be forgiven for assuming East Harlem has plenty of open space. But a new report from New Yorkers for Parks argues that the neighborhood is isolated from many of its parks by busy roads and other barriers. Streets and sidewalks, the group says, can play a crucial role in encouraging physical activity as part of the neighborhood’s fight against above-average asthma and obesity problems.

East Harlem children hula-hoop on the 104th Street play street in 2010. Photo: Transportation Alternatives

The report, funded by the Aetna Foundation and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, is the third in the advocacy group’s Open Space Index series; the first two reports covered Jackson Heights and the Lower East Side. Since its release in 2010, the Jackson Heights index has been used by local advocates and leaders to show how the neighborhood stands to benefit from initiatives such as play streets and public plazas.

New Yorkers for Parks Executive Director Holly Leicht told Streetsblog that she is hoping for this report to have a similar effect in East Harlem. “We want to put these in the hands of community leaders and residents,” she said, “and let them figure out what their priorities are with this data.”

One of the report’s top recommendations is the continued expansion of street safety improvements in the neighborhood. “Streets and sidewalks comprise 80 percent of New York City public space,” the report notes. “Unless they are safe, accessible passageways, they can serve as barriers rather than connectors.”

Play streets, which have already been implemented in East Harlem, can play a central role in providing open space for residents, the report finds. For six Thursdays in the summer of 2010, East 104th Street between Second and Third Avenues was converted to a play street, giving children space to play games, meet with friends or work on arts-and-crafts. The report recommends linking play streets with farmers markets to promote healthy nutrition along with physical activity.

The complete street treatments recently installed on First and Second Avenues are a big step forward for street safety, but East Harlem continues to have some of the most dangerous intersections on the East Side, including 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, where 19 cyclists and pedestrians died between 1998 and 2008.

Some intersections that provide critical access to parks along the Harlem River and the East River have already received upgrades after Transportation Alternatives worked with community groups to come up with solutions.The intersection of 142nd Street and Fifth Avenue, for example, received upgrades to slow traffic accessing FDR Drive and shorten crossing distances for pedestrians accessing a footbridge to Harlem River Park.

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Living near transit can help you stay trim and healthy. That’s the result of a study published last year in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine. This study is a little old — it was published in August 2011 — but we just came across it in the Reconnecting America resource center and the results are too interesting not to share.

Transit riders in Charlotte North Carolina are 81 percent less likely to be obese than those who drive to work. Photo: Forbes

A team of social scientists and public health experts examined the health effects of Charlotte, North Carolina’s Lynx light rail line, which was installed in 2007. The study was designed to avoid a common problem in studies of transit’s impact on health: selection bias. People who are already active may choose urban, transit-accessible neighborhoods to suit their preexisting lifestyles. In this study, however, the researchers only looked at those who lived along the Lynx route both before and after light rail arrived.

The light rail riders’ Body Mass Index, the researchers found, fell by an average of 1.18 points compared to those who didn’t ride the system. That translates into a loss of about six and a half pounds for a person who is 5-feet, 5-inches tall. In addition, light rail users were 81 percent less likely to become obese over time.

The results were weighted to control for education, age, race gender, distance to work, neighborhood features and other factors that might skew the results.

Researchers said the weight loss reported by subjects was consistent with adding as much as 1.2 miles walking to a person’s daily routine. All the subjects lived within one mile of the light rail corridor, which has surpassed ridership expectations.

“The results of this study suggest that improving neighborhood environments and increasing the public’s use of LRT systems could provide improvements in health outcomes for millions of individuals,” the authors concluded. “Public policy investments in transit should consider potential increases in physical activity as part of the broader set of cost–benefit calculations of transit systems.”

Who suffers most from bad road design? Not surprisingly, the answer is poor people, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

Poor people are much more likely to live near wide, high-traffic streets and are thus much more likely to be injured by a car, according to a new study. Photo: Naples News

Researchers examined injury rates for pedestrians, drivers and cyclists over a five-year period in Montreal. They found pedestrians living in low-income neighborhoods were more than six times more likely to be injured by a moving vehicle than those from high-income neighborhoods.

Motorists and cyclists in low-income neighborhoods didn’t fare much better. These drivers were 4.3 times more likely to be injured. For cyclists the ratio was 3.9 to 1.

The reason, researchers said, was “exposure to traffic.” The study found that low-income neighborhoods were more likely to contain major arterials and four-way intersections — two of the biggest risk factors for those traveling by any mode. The study also found low-income neighborhoods were subject to traffic volumes 2.4 times greater than high-income — one of the best predictors of injury.

“Traffic volume at intersections increased significantly with poverty,” the authors wrote. “If the average daily traffic at intersections in the poorest census tracts were equal to that in wealthiest census tracts, … there would be 21% fewer pedestrians, 19% fewer cyclists, and 25% fewer motor vehicle occupants injured at intersections in those areas.”

Low-income residents also faced additional risk factors. They were much more likely to rely on walking or transit to get around. They tended to live in higher-density areas, a factor that was associated with high traffic volumes.

So what’s the best way to reduce injury? Study authors say promoting alternatives to driving is an important strategy.

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Sidewalks, bike lanes, traffic calming projects — they save lives. Not just by protecting cyclists and pedestrians (not to mention motorists), but by encouraging physical activity that leads to a healthy life.

How much will that new traffic calming project benefit society? A new tool from the World Health Organization puts a figure on it. Photo: Tom Fudge/KPBS

Of course, it can be hard to convince politicians to see things in those terms when it’s time to pony up for walking and biking infrastructure. That is the brilliance of this new tool from the World Health Organization.

The WHO, which is on a mission to rein in the worldwide epidemic of traffic deaths and injuries, has developed a tool that measures the health impacts of bike and pedestrian infrastructure projects, calculating cost-benefit analyses as well as the economic value of reduced mortality.

Of course you need to do a little advance preparation before using the tool. You’ll need to have a fair amount of information about local travel habits at your disposal. (For example, you’ll be prompted to estimate the percentage of people who currently take walking trips and the average length of the trip.) But it’s the type of info your local metro planning agency should have publicly available. Worst case scenario, you have to perform a survey.

The tool is recommended for planners and engineers as well as advocacy groups.