Safe passages: Increasing physical activity among students in violence-entrenched neighborhoods

A neighborhood dominated by the presence of violence can critically affect the health of a community and prevent children from fulfilling their highest potential. In these neighborhoods, safe routes to school strategies must go beyond the traditional 5 E’s: engineering, encouragement, education, and enforcement. Parents, youth, and community members living in places with high violence, crime, multi-generational gangs, and family isolation feel unsafe being physically active in their own community and often are disempowered to address the violence problem.

In Los Angeles' Belmont and Watts neighborhoods, students face pervasive fear, unable to get to and from school safely because of gangs that consider these areas their territory. Advancement Project worked to address systemic barriers preventing students from walking and biking to school in these low-income, violence-entrenched neighborhoods.  Together with diverse partners throughout the city, the Advancement Project pilot tested policy solutions to increase physical activity among students. The goal was to help school personnel, community experts, municipal agencies, and law enforcement increase coordination to implement safety measures ensuring that students and their families can travel to and from school safety, and without the fear of harassment or violence. Increased safe access to school also has implications for school attendance, academic performance, and long-term health outcomes.

The presentation will examine how violence reduction stakeholders and schools are collaborating to increase safety and physical activity in neighborhoods with high violence. It will illuminate how collaborative strategies can lead to community empowerment and impact student walking and family mobility around the school.