Oral

Physical activity and good nutrition are critical to living a healthy life. Both schools and neighborhoods have a significant role to play, providing the environmental context for a large part of every child’s day. Innovative research has been exploring the roles in which these environments can and do influence children’s and families’ activity levels. In an unprecedented occurrence of translation, communities have been putting evidence into action as fast as the evidence can be built. This panel will present the latest findings describing the current, shocking state of Physical Education in schools, and the lack of usable physical activity spaces in communities. Then representatives from three community projects of the Healthy Eating, Active Communities initiative will provide solutions for improving the physical activity environment in schools and neighborhoods with the policies and programs they are implementing.

Session Objectives: • Prioritize issues related to school and neighborhood physical activity environments to identify key policy strategies. • Analyze neighborhood-level data to identify three policy solutions to communities lacking physical activity opportunities. • Develop strategies to engage underrepresented communities in identifying potential changes to increase access to physical activity in their communities • Define ways to measure short-term success in different stages of the policy-making process.

CE Credits: CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing