Use of Walk to School Month activities to promote environmental change within Latino communities

Orange County, California, is home to some of the most densely populated, young, undereducated and proportionally foreign born Latino communities in the US. The County seat of Santa Ana is also the heart of Orange County's Latino population, who suffer disproportionally from diabetes, obesity, and physical inactivity. In addition, Santa Ana has the lowest amount of park acreage per capita among large US cities. Consequently, many obesity prevention interventions target the city, including Healthy Eating Active Communities and Active Living by Design projects. These efforts include partnerships between the Orange County Health Care Agency, Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD), and Latino Health Access, a local community organization, to promote walking among children, which culminates in Walk to School Month. In October 2008, Walk to School Month activities were implemented in 28 elementary schools, which served almost 28,000 students or 71% of SAUSD's elementary enrollment. These activities resulted in environmental assessments, environmental changes and an ongoing commitment by schools to participate in and support future Walk to School efforts. This presentation details the successful implementation of Walk to School activities within this heavily immigrant, socioeconomically challenged community. Such implementation hinges on the development of relationships with school, community, city, law enforcement, and media partners; community mobilization; technical assistance; use of walk audit and evaluation data; and linking with city planning and traffic engineering departments to assess the necessity for environmental modifications to promote walkability. Strategically modifying school environments may promote walking to school, thereby impacting childhood obesity in Latino communities.