NACDD Is Helping 51 Walkability Teams from 31 States to “Step It Up”

Submission Date: August 2019

State/Territory Submitted on the Behalf of: Georgia

States/Territories Involved: Georgia

Funding Source: CDC

CDC Funding:

Yes

CDC Funding (Specified):

Other CDC Funding

Domain Addressed:

Environmental Approaches

Public Health Issue:

• Nearly 26% of American adults get no leisure-time physical activity.
• Only approximately half of American adults satisfy the minimum aerobic physical activity guidelines.
• “Place” adversely affects the health of people when built design does not allow access to physical activity or safe methods of non-motorized transportation.
• When the US Surgeon General released a Call to Action to Promote Walking and Walkable Communities in 2015, a national focus was born, urging all of us to do our part in supporting active and walkable community design and environments.
• Creating active living by design is a shared responsibility among many groups.
• New efforts should target inequitable groups and seek to incorporate social and environmental justice concepts.
• Communities that are designed to be more walkable and active are also healthier, happier, and economically vibrant.

Project Objectives:

The NACDD Walkability Action Institute (WAI) project consists of the following overarching objectives:

• Develop and implement a competitive request for funding assistance (RFA) process for interested interdisciplinary teams to apply to receive travel support to attend the four-day action institute course.
• Establish a team of RFA application reviewers and select the goal number of interdisciplinary teams to participate in the WAI.
• Conduct a pre-course webinar in advance of the WAI course in efforts to detail travel logistics, course expectations, and pre-course homework.
• Develop, implement, and evaluate a multi-day WAI for interdisciplinary teams to learn about community and transportation design.
• Conduct a post-course webinar following course attendance to assist teams with Team Action Plan development.
• Collect Team Action Plans from participant teams.

Program Action:

• With the help of CDC Division of Nutrition, Physical Activty, and Obesity (DNPAO), NACDD established the WAI in 2015, bringing together interdisciplinary teams consisting of public health, transportation, planing, elected officials and other discipline representatives to learn about walkable community design.
• NACDD established a robust course faculty cadre comprised of national experts in public health, equity, engineering, planning, and transportation design, who provided subject matter expertise for the course dates.
• Following the course, participant teams developed and submitted a Team Action Plan of new policy, system, and environmental strategies toward making their region more walkable.
• A Walkability Community of Practice (CoP) peer learning group was convened in 2015 for WAI alumni teams and is still being implemented for all five WAI alumni cohorts.

Data/Other Information Collected:

• Over the last five years, a total of 51 interdisciplinary teams from 31 states have participated in the WAI.
• A total of 418 total WAI participants have been trained, with 288 of these representing participant team members.
• To date, a total of 633 collective outcomes have been voluntarily self-reported by representing Team Leads reaching a self-reported 40,226,033 people across the five cohorts of teams.
• To date, the WAI teams have leveraged a self-reported $170,366,041 to implement related walkability efforts, resulting in an NACDD project return-on-investment ration of approximately 126:1.
• A total of 31 Walkability CoP peer engagement meetings have been implemented for a total of 460 duplicated WAI alumni participants, yielding an average of 14.8 participants per meeting.

Impact/Accomplishments:

• A variety of walkability-related statewide plans are now in place in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, and Oregon that reach approximately 23,000,000 people residing in those states.
• Colorado, Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee have implemented (or are implementing) a combined $5,660,000 in funding opportunities for local communities to work toward walkability-related improvements.
• A variety of walkability-related local plans were established in 16 WAI team locations reaching nearly 7,000,000 residing in those locations.
• New project prioritization and scoring systems are now in place in five WAI team locations reaching more than 2.5 million people.

Challenges/Lessons Learned:

NACDD uses past lessons learned to enhance the following WAI best practices:

• Use course participant evaluations to drive agenda development and the course faculty subject matter assignments.
• Continue the interdisciplinary approach in requiring representation of public health, transportation, planning, elected officials, and other contributing disciplines in participant team make-up.
• Continue to ensure that the course faculty cadre is representative of the required disciplines for participant teams.
• Integrate multiple equity foci, such as disability inclusion, place-based approaches, race/ethnicity injustices, and gentrification into the course content and experiential learning activities.

Next Steps:

NACDD will:

• Continue to partner with CDC DNPAO to enhance and implement the WAI model.
• Continue to provide ongoing interaction, technical assistance, and support to all WAI alumni teams who wish to stay engaged with NACDD and each other, which includes ongoing implementation of the Walkability CoP group.
• Continue to monitor outcomes through administration of online, voluntary, and self-report progress report surveys.
• Continue to serve as a resource for state chronic disease programs for walkability-related efforts.

Program Areas:

Healthy Communities (general)

State Contact Information:

GA
Karma E. Harris, MSPH
National Association of Chronic Disease Directors
904-608-8315
kedwards@chronicdisease.org

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