The Middle Tennessee Transportation and Health Study
looked at the relationship between transportation, health
and overall physical activity based on a survey of 6,000
households in the region — including a subset of 600 households who wore GPS devices and activity monitors.
Data from the study has become a north star for transportation planning in the region, steering support for active
transportation to neighborhoods with high levels of health
problems and low levels of physical activity. “It makes sure
funding goes where it’s needed most,” Meehan says.
Improved health outcomes won’t come overnight because
the epidemic of chronic diseases didn’t develop overnight,
but the potential payback for even modest gains in physical activity is a game changer.
The Middle Tennessee Transportation and Health Study
found the average person in the region walks or bikes just
three minutes a day for transportation purposes — excluding
any walking or biking they might do for recreation or exercise. Using a model developed in the United Kingdom, the
NAMPO estimated the monetary impact if everyone in the
region walked or biked 10 minutes a day for transportation.
“The results are preliminary ... but the savings are about
$200 million a year in health care costs that wouldn’t be
expended because of diseases that wouldn’t be incurred
because people would be healthier,” Meehan says.
As more data rolls in showing the return on investment of
active transportation, more thought leaders and policy makers around the country are looking at the built environment
in general — and transportation in particular — from a
public health perspective.
“Everybody from all of these different fields — health, transportation, planning, housing — wants to play in the same
sandbox and start figuring out how to work together on this
issue,” says Meehan, who is now assistant director for primary prevention at the Tennessee Department of Health.
“This is still very much burgeoning, but we’re headed down
the right path.”
The American Planning Association (APA) and the
American Public Health Association (APHA) launched
Plan4Health to combat chronic disease by changing the
built environment — a natural mission for the two professions to share because planning originated with a
public health focus.
“The long-term goal is to integrate public health with plan-
ning so that both fields are thinking about how to support
one another’s goals and really think about the health of
the people they’re serving,” says Anna Ricklin, manager
of the planning association’s Planning and Community
Health Center.
Plan 4Health is supported by the CDC and focuses on two
major risk factors for chronic disease — lack of physical
activity and lack of access to nutritious food. Plan4Health
awarded $2.5 million in grants from the CDC to 18 local
coalitions — anchored by APA and APHA members —
to help them attack those problems.
In Columbus, Ind., for example, a coalition consisting
of a dozen groups is working to increase physical activity
by creating safer pedestrian and bicycle crossings at three
intersections along a trail system and at three state highway intersections.
“If people don’t feel safe, they don’t enjoy walking.
We need to make the healthy choice the easy choice for
people,” Ricklin says.
Complete streets policies are one way to weave walkability
into a community. By adopting complete streets policies,
communities direct transportation planners and engineers
to routinely design and operate roadways with pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders — not just cars — in mind.
More than 700 local, regional and state agencies across
the country have introduced complete streets policies,
according to the National Complete Streets Coalition.
(The NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® is
a member of the steering committee of the Coalition.)
Photo courtesy of the City of Boulder
