Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #115393

Thomas A. Farley, MD, MPH, Community Health Sciences, Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, 1440 Canal Street, New Orleans, LA 70112, 504 588-5391, tfarley@tulane.edu, Rebecca Meriwether, MD MPH, Family and Community Medicine, Tulane University, 1440 Canal Street, New Orleans, LA 70112, Carolyn C. Johnson, PhD, Department of Community Health Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, 1440 Canal St., Suite 2301, New Orleans, LA 70112, and Larry S. Webber, PhD, Department of Biostatistics, Tulane University School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, 1440 Canal St., 20th Floor, New Orleans, LA 70112.

Parents' perception of lack of neighborhood safety may be an important barrier to physical activity in children. We are conducting a pilot project to determine whether simply providing a safe play space increases outdoor physical activity among inner-city children. In a single low-income neighborhood in New Orleans, in a schoolyard that had previously been locked, we provided play equipment and paid adults to provide supervision (but no organized activities) for children afternoons and on Saturdays. The effect of the intervention is measured by direct observations in the intervention schoolyard and in neighborhoods surrounding the intervention school and a matched control school. In the first 12 months, the mean daily attendance at the schoolyard was 73.9 on weekdays when school was in session; 72% of children enrolled in the intervention school attended the schoolyard at least once, and among these students, the mean number of days attending was 35.8. At the moment they were observed in the schoolyard, 35% of children were described as “walking” and an additional 30% recorded as “very active”. Over the first 18 months, the mean number of children outdoors and physically active in intervention area (schoolyard and surrounding neighborhood combined) was 88% higher than the number of children physically active in the control neighborhood. Surprisingly, the number of the number of children observed outdoors in the intervention neighborhood alone (excluding the schoolyard) was 32% higher than in the control neighborhood. Providing a safe play space may increase physical activity in high-risk inner-city children.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the role that neighborhood safety may play in the problem of insufficient physical activity in inner-city children
• Describe a simple environmental intervention that may increase physical activity though enhancing neighborhood safety

Keywords: Physical Activity, Environment

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.