Atlanta Streets Alive: A Movement Building a Culture of Health in an Urban Environment

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Torres ◽  
John Steward ◽  
Sheryl Strasser ◽  
Rodney Lyn ◽  
Rebecca Serna ◽  
...  

Background:Open Streets are community-based programs that promote the use of public space for physical activity (PA), recreation and socialization by closing streets temporarily to motorized vehicles, allowing access to pedestrians. The city of Atlanta hosted its first Open Streets event, Atlanta Streets Alive (ASA), in May 2010. An evaluation of the first 5 ASA events from May 2010 to May 2012 was conducted. The purpose was to learn about the characteristics of ASA participants, the influence of the event on their PA, and perceptions of safety and neighborhood social capital.Methods:ASA’s evaluation had 2 components: participant counts and a participant survey. Characteristics of participation were compared among the 3 different events in which surveys were conducted using the Pearson χ2 test and F test as appropriate.Results:The estimated participation at ASA increased from nearly 3,500 (ASA 1 to 4) to 12,520 (ASA 5). The number of events increased to 3 per year for a total of 10 events until 2014. Overall, 19.4% of participants met the weekly PA recommendation during 1 event.Conclusions:The expanding diversity of routes, participants, and sponsorships highlights the potential promise such programming offers in terms of establishing an urban culture of health.

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Furong Xu ◽  
Stephanie Marchand ◽  
Celeste Corcoran ◽  
Heather DiBiasio ◽  
Rachel Clough ◽  
...  

There is a need for efficacious interventions to reduce the prevalence of childhood obesity, and a limited body of research suggests that collaborative community-based programs designed for children and their caregivers may be effective in reducing obesity rates. This paper reports the results of a community-based obesity intervention, South County Food, Fitness and Fun (SCFFF), designed for preadolescent children who are overweight or obese and their caregivers. SCFFF was developed in response to community concerns. Families were referred to the program by their physician and participated in the program at no cost. The 16-week intervention includes weekly group nutrition and physical activity sessions. Analyses determined that 65 out of the 97 children who completed SCFFF provided 2-year follow-up data and had reduced BMIz-scores over 2 years following the intervention. These participants decreased their energy, fat, carbohydrate, saturated fat, and sodium intake and increased core body strength and endurance from baseline to the end of the intervention. SCFFF was effective in reducing relative weight and improving diet and core muscle strength and endurance in children who are overweight or obese.


2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-25
Author(s):  
Martin Severin Frandsen

Denne artikel tager afsæt i den aktuelle sociologiske og offentlige diskussion om offentlige byrum og præsenterer nyere og i dansk sammenhæng stort set ukendte bidrag fra den strømning i fransk sociologi, der betegnes som ”den pragmatiske vending”. Artiklen har to hovedpointer. For det første at den pragmatiske bysociologi kan bidrage til denne diskussion ved at beskrive og fremhæve betydningen af de oftest upåagtede og dagligdags kompetencer, ved hjælp af hvilke byboere skaber sociale overenskomster og fredelig sameksistens på offentlige steder i socialt og kulturelt differentierede byer. For det andet at bysociologien ifølge de pragmatiske sociologer ikke kan standse ved analyser af segregation, ghettodannelser og lokale fællesskabers tilegnelser af territorier. ”At tænke byen” indebærer at bevæge sig videre til også at undersøge de byrumsmæssige design og trafikale forbindelser og passageveje, der skaber sammenhængen i det urbane væv og tillader byboeren at overvinde fremmedheden på et ikke fortroligt territorium. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Martin Severin Frandsen: Rediscovering Urban Culture and Public Space: On Isaac Joseph and the Pragmatic Turn in French Urban Sociology This article analyses current sociological and public discussions concerning public urban spaces, and introduces new (and in a Danish context largely unknown) contributions from the movement in French sociology that has been labelled ”the pragmatic turn”. The article makes two main arguments. Firstly, the pragmatic urban sociology can contribute to these discussions by highlighting the importance of the often unnoticed and everyday civilities through which city-dwellers create social agreements and peaceful co-existence in public places in socially and culturally heterogeneous cities. Secondly, urban sociology cannot, according to the pragmatic sociologists, stop with inquiries into segregation, ghettos and local populations appropriations of territories. Imagining the city implies moving on to explore the designs of public spaces and public transit systems that create continuity and mobility in urban agglomerations and allow city-dwellers to overcome the strangeness of unfamiliar territories.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-179
Author(s):  
Jena Shank ◽  
Carolina Chamorro-Viña ◽  
Gregory M. T. Guilcher ◽  
David Michael Langelier ◽  
Fiona Schulte ◽  
...  

Research on the benefits of physical activity (PA) in childhood cancer has been translated into a handful of community-based programs. However, to foster further translation, an understanding of how to evaluate participant outcomes would be beneficial to provide feedback to participants and stimulate future research. Such a review would provide a summary of acceptable tools for work in this area. The purpose of this scoping review was to identify the evaluation tools that have been used in PA/exercise studies or programs for childhood cancer. This review was conducted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Studies included in the review used physical and psychosocial evaluation tools within PA and exercise programs or research for childhood cancer. In addition, studies with measures of health behavior such as PA levels and activities of daily living were included. Tools that assessed physical fitness and physical performance were excluded. Information on the types of evaluation tools used, mean age of participants, and type of cancer was extracted. Psychometric properties of each evaluation tool are reported. The most commonly assessed patient outcomes were motor performance, fatigue, well-being, functional mobility, and quality of life. Less commonly reported patient outcomes were hope, self-efficacy, and self-perception. None of the evaluation tools reported in the PA/exercise and pediatric oncology literature assess physical literacy. This review was the first step in a knowledge translation process, identifying evaluation tools that have been used in PA/exercise programs in childhood cancer survivors, that will guide the development and evaluation of current and future community-based programs.


2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry McIver ◽  
Samuel L. Odom ◽  
Kerry McIver ◽  
William Brown ◽  
Christina McWilliams

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigi Patruno

During the Peronist years (1943‐55), architect Jorge Sabaté designed several exhibitions and ephemeral installations to be erected in the central streets of Buenos Aires. These interventions were aimed at transforming the face of the city, repurposing its spaces for unprecedented uses and expressing the right ‘the people’ had gained to free time, outings and leisure. In this article, I examine the architectural illustrations that Sabaté appended to the rest of his plans. The incorporation into his drawings of the social practices of metropolitan strolling is one of the ways in which the Peronist exhibitions designed by Sabaté relate to urban culture. By staging the masses in these materials, Sabaté proposes a whole new form of conviviality in public space and depicts the popular sectors aspiring to a new lifestyle made possible by the intersection of technological progress and expanded access to consumer goods.


2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 516-531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Orsega-Smith ◽  
Laura L. Payne ◽  
Geoffry Godbey

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a community-based exercise program for adults 60 years and older. Specifically, the authors sought to examine selected physical and psychosocial indicators of health among low-, moderate-, and high-frequency participants. Data on selected physical-fitness variables from baseline and 6-month follow-up assessments were available for 196 members. In addition, 265 current members completed a mailed questionnaire regarding frequency of program participation, health, demographics, and psychosocial outcomes. Significant improvements in endurance and flexibility were documented for the group at large over 6 months, and the low-participation group showed a significant increase in flexibility. Self-efficacy was higher for those in both the low- and high-frequency groups than for those in the moderate-participation group. Exercise-based social support was reported to be higher among the low- and high-participation groups than among the moderate-participation group. Results suggest that community-based programs and community parks and recreation agencies are a viable context for senior exercise/physical activity programs.


2014 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 114
Author(s):  
Ricardo A. Berrocal-Lemeni ◽  
Osvaldo J. Hernández-Soto ◽  
Farah A. Ramírez-Marrero ◽  
Alexander Castillo-López ◽  
Luis D. O. Torres-Esteves ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Carl Douglas

Inorganic collections, kerbside collections of inorganic waste that cannot be recycled or disposed of by the regular means, are held in most parts of Auckland twice yearly. In practice, proscribed items are abundant, piles reach gargantuan proportions, and footpaths are disrupted. Salvaging from these piles is common, and accounts for the fondness many Aucklanders feel towards these collections. As of July 1, 2015 they will cease, to be replaced by “community recycling hubs” and booked waste collections. Soon be part of the history of Auckland’s urban culture, inorganic collections are also a significant moment for discerning the configuration of its public space. I employ inorganic collections as a probe for mapping the regime of public space at work in Auckland’s suburban streets. Baron von Haussmann’s Paris serves as a model for the administrative rationalisation of cities, according to which streets cease to be civic spaces, and become conduits for bundled technical systems. The production of atmosphere as phantasmagoria or spectacle is essential as part of the policing of a regime in which everything has its place and its proper conduits. Atmospheres are seen as technostructures for subjects. The handling of urban waste is symptomatic of this atmotechnics, seamlessly and invisibly whisking away waste away. The public space of the administratively rationalised city relies on the careful construction and laborious physical and symbolic maintenance of an interior and an exterior; a finite ‘here’ of desirable or useful things moving in orderly synchronicity, and an infinite ‘away’ which absorbs and isolates us from the undesirable or redundant which cannot be made to move in sync. Waste passes across the horizon between these two spaces, through a porous and sometimes leaky membrane that purports to selectively permit and prevent affects from passing between here and away.In the administratively rationalised city, waste is siphoned away from public space, no longer permitted to perform in the relation between me and my neighbour. Inorganic collections, however, undermine or overflow this waste regime. Momentarily, when the inorganic collection takes place, the policed order of the street is disrupted. For a short time waste is not a private matter handled invisibly between myself and the city; but something that activates relationships (disputes, perhaps, but also potentially exchanges or discoveries of things in common or intriguing differences) with my neighbours.


2014 ◽  
Vol 46 ◽  
pp. 114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis D. O. Torres-Esteves ◽  
Osvaldo J. Hernández-Soto ◽  
Farah A. Ramírez-Marrero ◽  
Sharon C. Carlo-Súarez ◽  
Alexander Castillo-López ◽  
...  

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