Trunk or Treat!

The eyebrow-raiser of the week was our discovery of Trunk-Or-Treating. You read it right. Trunk, not Trick. According to the folks at About.com :

"Holding a Trunk-or-Treat Halloween activity is a great way to keep Halloween safe. What is a Trunk-or-Treat? It's when several families get together...park their cars in the parking lot, open up the trunks of their cars, and kids come around to each car to Trunk-or-Treat instead of going house to house to Trick-or-Treat."

So, what used to look like this:

photo credit: methyl_lives (Flickr), some rights reserved

Is starting to look like tailgating for toddlers:

photo credit: LocoLyn (Flickr)

Advocates for Trunk or Treating will cite the following benefits: safety from traffic, safety from crime, knowing their "neighbors", and easy walking from trunk to trunk. Interesting... Those are all the same qualities of well-designed communities.

Ironically, what many people are unable to find in their own neighborhoods, they are finding in oil-stained parking lots from coast to coast.

More than anything, the rise of Trunk-Or-Treating is a reminder of the challenges that many communities face. Fewer sidewalks, busier streets, decreased sense of community and decreased sense of safety has pushed people out of their homes and into parking lots. It's also a spooky reminder of how car-focused the average American life has become. The very idea that Trunk-Or-Treating involves kids walking around and playing on black-tar asphalt instead of a grassy park or a school football field is a tell-tale sign of our co-dependent relationship with our cars. The name "Trunk or Treat" is clever and all, but it's not enough to convince us that 3 hours in a parking lot is better than 3 hours in a park.

We need to start working to improve the places we live before empty parking lots become our safe havens, and all we're left with is junk in our trunks.

Some simple steps to take:
-Get to know your neighbors
-Start walking in your community
-Work with your city council to ensure walkability (start by learning about your existing street design standards--are pedestrian or bicycle accommodations required in your community?)
-Gather residents, city officials, and law enforcement officers to discuss and address safety concerns
-Beautify your community: organize neighborhood clean-up, pruning, and planting events

The Ethics of Community Design

Randy Cohen knows a thing or two about right and wrong. He spends his days contemplating such matters deeply and writing "The Ethicist" column for the New York Times. In the following video, Randy discusses the ethics of city planning and transportation systems and the important role of public policy: "We as a culture, a country, a society are capable of making wise policy choices."

Is your community making ethical decisions? Do your policies reflect your ethics?

The Global Warming Diet

Climate Change is one of the biggest issues facing our world.
Your stomach may also be one of the biggest things facing you.

Kill two birds with one stone.

The Associated Press just published an article about the Global Warming Diet. Walk or bike your way to personal and global health. It sure makes a lot of sense. And if you live in a place that is not especially walkable or bikeable, get involved with your local government to encourage design standards and zoning codes that ensure Complete Streets that allow safe, enjoyable travel for pedestrians, cyclists, public transportation, and vehicles.

Read the AP article here: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/11/12/global.warming.diet.ap/index.html

“You Want Another Slice of Pizza?”

OBESITY and SOCIAL NETWORKS

The people around us influence our interests, our beliefs, our taste in music…and our waistlines. That’s right, our waistlines. Humans are social creatures. We eat together. We play sports on teams. We watch TV together. We do almost everything with other people. So it should come as no surprise that when a close friend stops exercising, starts eating less healthy foods, and ultimately gains weight, your chances of gaining weight increase significantly.


The Harvard Medical School released a study in July 2007 documenting this phenomenon. The 32-year study of 12,067 people found that if a person’s close friend becomes obese, that person’s chance of becoming obese increases by 57%; for siblings the increase is 40%; and for spouses the increase is 37%. The study also found that two close friends or sibling living far apart, still influence each other’s weight. Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, a professor in Harvard Medical School’s Department of Health Care Policy suggests that this influence across great distances may be caused by “a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate body size. People come to think that it is okay to be bigger since those around them are bigger, and this sensibility spreads.”

The good news is that our social networks can also work in the opposite direction, having positive influences on our health.

Christakis highlights the following three points from this study:
-Obesity is not just an individual phenomenon, but also a collective social phenomenon.
-Interventions should target groups of people rather than individuals. People loosing weight together is likely to be more effective than people loosing weight on their own.
-Prevention or treatment of weight gain in one individual will likely have ripple effects through social networks impacting others.

These findings underscore the importance of community-wide health interventions with components that influence social networks. Healthy and Active Communities include strong social networks of support, such as walking clubs, youth sports teams, and farmers’ markets.

“You want to go for a walk?”

Key elements of lasting change: Policy Change, Environment Change, and Social Change.

The full study can be found in the New England Journal of Medicine, July 26, Vol. 357, No. 4

The BIG Picture

America is losing the battle of the bulge. Each year, we let out our collective belts a little more... Now, obesity is literally spilling over the corn belt and impacting the health and quality of life for Americans from coast to coast.

For years, we have tried to address rising obesity rates with intervention programs including nutrition education and physical education programs. Despite all of our hard work with these programs, the obesity rate has continued to rise, seemingly unaffected by our efforts. Why?

The Solution Seems Simple
Americans just need to get off their couches, move more, eat healthier, and eat less, right?

Well, yes. But it's not that simple. To really get at the root of the problem, we have to figure out why we Americans aren't moving more and eating healthier.

The Problem is Complex
If a child walks out the front door of his or her home to deteriorated sidewalks or none at all, has no place to exercise, faces unsafe streets due to traffic or crime, has an abundance of unhealthy fast food options, and poor nutrition and physical education programs in the schools, then that child is at high risk of becoming obese.

A staggering number of communities throughout the country, from the urban core to rural areas, face many or all of these obstacles. In order to fully address the obesity epidemic, we need to transform our community environments by providing safe places to walk, places to exercise, access to healthy foods, and education about the importance of healthy eating and physical activity.

Active Living
Americans used to move a lot more. We walked to the store, we walked to the park, we biked to work, we took the stairs, we walked our children to school. We need to build physical activity back into our daily lives. That's what Active Living means. Currently, there are obstacles to Active Living at every step -- quite literally in some communities.

Some Real Solutions: Access, Education, and Design
In order to promote healthy and active communities, we need to address issues of access (access to healthy foods, access to safe public spaces to recreate), we need to improve education about healthy eating and active lifestyles, and we need to improve the design of our communities to encourage active living.

Trailnet's Healthy and Active Communities Initiative will work with four communities in the St. Louis region (2 St. Louis neighborhoods, one suburb, and one rural community) to address these issues and transform them into Healthy & Active Communities.

Introducing Trailnet's Healthy & Active Communities Initiative

Trailnet is thrilled to announce the kick-off of our Healthy and Active Communities Initiative! This exciting new initiative, works to combat the obesity epidemic through policy.

Obesity rates have skyrocketed in Missouri in the last 20 years. In 1990, 11.9% of Missouri adults were obese; today, over 25% of Missouri adults are obese. As a result, rates of heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and respiratory disease have sharply increased, resulting in lower quality of life for Missourians and enormous medical costs to individuals and governments. Sadly, due to these factors our current generation of children is the first generation that is not expected to live as long as their parents.

Trailnet’s Healthy and Active Communities Initiative focuses at the policy-level to produce the farthest-reaching and longest-term solutions to the obesity epidemic. Through partnerships and collaborations, we are working with organizations and institutions throughout the St. Louis region to develop and implement policies promoting Active Living and Healthy Nutrition in four low-income communities most vulnerable to developing obesity. We will work with community leaders and stakeholders to improve access to healthy foods, to develop zoning codes that create walkable / bikeable communities, and to encourage physical activity as a part of daily routines.

We are excited to be working with the following partner organizations on this initiative:
-Grace Hill Settlement House, www.gracehill.org
-The St. Louis County Dept of Health, www.co.st-louis.mo.us/doh
-The St. Louis Regional Bicycle Federation, www.stlbikefed.org
-The US Green Building Council, chapters.usgbc.org/stlouis
-Whittaker Homes, www.whittakerhomes.com

This exciting initiative builds on Trailnet’s work in community planning, active programming, education, and advocacy. In the months and years ahead, we will develop and implement broad sets of policies that systematically combat obesity by creating communities of support that promote active living, healthy school lunch programs, well-maintained public spaces, and safe streets. Funding for this project was provided in part by The Missouri Foundation for Health. The Missouri Foundation for Health is a philanthropic organization whose vision is to improve the health of the people in the communities it serves. Thanks to Matthew Diller for use of the photo from New Roots Urban Farm.