Boston Neighbor-walk
Submission Date: December 2012
State/Territory Submitted on the Behalf of: Massachusetts
States/Territories Involved: Massachusetts
Domain Addressed:Environmental Approaches
Public Health Issue:- Boston, Massachusetts area residents can be challenged by safety concerns common to big cities even though their city has many attractive, walkable areas.
- Walking is a low cost, highly effective way of meeting physical activity guidelines but not enough urban residents are walking.
- Boston NeighborWalk program, part of the Boston Public Health Commission, provides $500 grants to community-based organizations to identify convenient and accessible walking routes, organize weekly walks, and recruit walking groups, which are assigned a walk leader who also assists in educational sessions.
- The Boston Public Health Commission has been supported by the direct involvement of the Mayor(s) of Boston throughout the life of the program.
- The Boston Police Department patrols walking areas to help insure safety and the Boston Red Sox provided funding to help sustain the program.
- This program enables residents to be active (for free!) in their own neighborhoods.
- Â The Harvard University Prevention Research Center showed that in the first 5 years:
- over 1200 individuals took 1501 walks averaging 2.2 miles
- median daily walk time for participants was 43 minutes
- participants report walking more at work (+57%), place-to-place (+73%) and in leisure time (+57%)
- The NeighborWalk experience shows that safety barriers can be overcome when municipalities and organizations commit to doing so. The program also credits walking in groups as a facilitator to activity.
- Celebration of the 10th year in 2012 with 27 groups and more than 380 participants walking demonstrates the programâs sustainability.
- Integrating NeighborWalk into Boston Moves for Health, a new, larger, mayorâs initiative can help meet the mayorâs goal for residents of 10,000,000 miles walked this year.
Healthy Communities (general)
State Contact Information:
MA
Mary Jane Williams, MS
Boston Public Health Commission
mwilliams@bphc.org