Background and Purpose
Both policy makers and researchers have been examining ways to solve the growing obesity epidemic among youth. More than one-third of children ages 10-17 in the United States are overweight or obese (Ogden et al., 2012). One area of interest has focused on the adoption of local policies related to the built environment to promote physical activity. The Institute of Medicine’s (2009) Local Government Policies to Prevent Childhood Obesity report recommends that local governments adopt policies that promote safe walking environments around schools and agreements with school districts to allow joint use of recreation facilities to increase opportunities for physical activity.
Objectives
This presentation will present new data on the prevalence of local government (municipal, town, township) school-related policies and plans addressing school siting, pedestrian safety, and community use of school facilities for recreational purposes as well as the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics associated with such policy and plan provisions.
Methods
Data were compiled in 2010 from zoning ordinances and related policies and master/comprehensive plans obtained from local governments (municipal, town, township) surrounding a national sample of 154 secondary schools as part of the Bridging the Gap Community Obesity Measures Project (BTG-COMP). Zoning codes existed for 175 jurisdictions and master/comprehensive plans existed for 191 local government jurisdictions surrounding the secondary school catchments. Hard and electronic copies of the zoning codes and related policies were obtained by BTG researchers and were independently reviewed and evaluated by trained policy analysts using the BTG-COMP School-Related Policy/Plan Assessment Tool which seeks to assess the extent to which policies and plans addressed active living around schools. Specifically, the tool addressed items such as school siting (co-location of schools with parks/athletic fields/open space and schools being sited within walking distance of residential areas), sidewalks/crosswalks/crossing guards around schools, and joint use agreements of school facilities by community groups.Descriptive statistics and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted in STATA v. 12. To account for the relative weight of the zoning ordinances from multiple local governments pertinent to the same school catchment, the data were weighted proportional to the population of thelocal jurisdiction. All analyses were clustered by school catchment to account for the lack of independence among the same policies for a given catchment. Data on socioeconomic and demographic characteristics for each of the policy communities were compiled using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the 2010 Census data, and Census Tiger files. The demographic and socioeconomic data were included in the multivariate logistic regression models to examine whether policy/plan provisions varied based on community characteristics and whether disparities exist in such policy/plan provisions.
Results
Overall, communities were more likely to address school-related provisions in their plans than in their policies (see Figure 1). At the policy level, communities were most likely to address sidewalks around schools (31%) and joint use agreements (26%) in comparison to school siting or crosswalk/ crossing guard provisions. At the plan level, joint use (65%), school siting (42%), and sidewalks around schools (34%) were the most commonly addressed provisions. Multivariate analysis indicated that low income communities were 75% less likely to have a school siting policies than non-low income areas (OR=.22, 95% CI=.06, .86, p<.05). In addition, the plan data indicated that low income areas are less likely to address joint use agreements in their plans than non-low income areas (OR=.23, 95% CI=.09, .57, p<.05). Communities with a majority white population also were significantly less likely to include provisions in their plans addressing: school siting (OR=.39, 95% CI=.17, .89, p<.05) and that schools be located within walking distance of residential areas (OR=.34, 95% CI=.13, .91, p<.05). Policies addressing sidewalks/crosswalks around schools did not vary by socioeconomic/demographic characteristics.
Conclusions
Local governments are interested (as evidenced by the plan data) in identifying ways to improve the environments around schools to facilitate active transportation and to expand community access to school facilities for recreational purposes; however, data from this study suggests that interest does not lead to actual policy enactment. At the same time, disparities do exist in both policy and plan enactment at the local government level, particularly for areas that are racially/ethnically diverse or in the majority as well as for lower income communities.
Support / Funding Source
Robert Wood Johson Foundation-supported Bridging the Gap Program.
