“The science is clear that a sedentary lifestyle built around
auto-based mobility is often associated with poor health
outcomes,” Nettler said. “There is an opportunity here
to do some things that we know can get people moving.”
Get Out and Walk to School!
One of the saddest parallels between the decline of walking in daily life and the prevalence of chronic disease in
the United States is the rise in childhood obesity.
Between 1980 and 2012, the number of children ages
6-11 who were obese grew to 18 percent from 7 percent
and the number of children ages 12-19 who were obese
grew to 21 percent from 5 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
A likely contributing factor: fewer kids walk to school
these days. In 1969, nearly half of children ages 5-14 typically walked or biked to school, according to the National
Center for Safe Routes to Schools (NCSRS). Over the
next 40 years, the number declined to just 13 percent.
The same safety and convenience concerns that discourage adults from walking — missing sidewalks and
crosswalks, high traffic speeds and volume, crime and
personal security — are doubly troubling for children,
so it’s understandable why many parents feel more comfortable driving their child to school.
Yet children need at least an hour of physical activity a
day to grow up healthy and help prevent chronic disease, according to the U.S. Department of Health and
Social Services. Driving kids to school who could walk
or bike is “a missed opportunity to build physical activity into their day,” says Dr. Jason Mendoza of Seattle
Children’s Research Institute.
The federal Safe Routes to School Program provides funding to help communities make walking and biking to
school safer and easier. The NCSRS shares information
about the program, supplies technical support and offers
tips on successful strategies such as walking school buses.
A walking school bus is a group of children walking to
school accompanied by one or more adults to alleviate safety concerns. Mendoza is leading a study to learn
whether the exercise gained from joining a walking school
bus can lead children to be more physically active throughout the entire day and help prevent obesity.
Mendoza is measuring the body mass index of each child
in the study — grades three through five — at the start
and the end of the school year and tracking their physical activity by giving them wearable activity monitors.
The study will compare data from a group of schools
where Mendoza’s team is leading walking school buses to
a group of schools without walking school buses.
“People are realizing we are spending way too much
time sitting,” Mendoza said. “We need to be moving to
be healthy.”
Courtesy of Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation
Courtesy of Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation
