Georgia Researchers Awarded $600,000 Grant to Study Park Use

Emory University
Tuesday, 9 December 2003

Why are some urban parks well-worn with use, while others sit empty? Why do some people head for a neighborhood park every chance they get, while others never go? Why do some park visitors jog, swim, or engage in other forms of vigorous exercise, while others do nothing more adventurous than feeding the pigeons?

A group of Georgia researchers headed by Dr. Howard Frumkin, chairman of the department of environmental and occupational health in Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, have been awarded a grant of nearly $600,000 by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to study urban neighborhood parks as a setting for physical activity. Active Living Research, a national program supported by RWJF, selected the research team as one of seven new grantees that are studying relationships between the built environment and physical activity levels.

The researchers, who are drawn from the University of Georgia, Georgia State, Georgia Tech, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as Emory, share an interest in promoting daily physical activity as a means of combating America's twin national epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

"This very interesting project illustrates the marriage that is occurring between the public health community and those who design, build, and manage the built environment -- including parks," said Dr. Frumkin. "It is increasingly clear that we have common interests and objectives that can best be achieved by working together."

Parks can be important sites for physical activity, especially in cities, because they offer facilities for walking, running, swimming, and playing games such as soccer and basketball that may not be possible in any other venue. However, the researchers say, many barriers -- ranging from inconvenient entrances, to uninviting pathways, to poor scheduling of group activities, to perceived fear of crime -- can cause some potential users to steer clear of parks.

By focusing on 15 parks in DeKalb County, and conducting controlled studies of both users and non-users selected from surrounding neighborhoods, the researchers hope to learn how various design features play out in parks' relative popularity and visitors' relative activity levels. Researchers are especially interested in user differences related to ethnic minority status, gender, and age.

The first year of the study will be devoted to observational analysis of the 15 parks, which have been chosen to represent a variety of features, including income level and ethnic mix of their surrounding neighborhoods; facilities and amenities; proximity to mass transit or highways; and reported crime rates.

In the second year of the study, research volunteers will be recruited in the communities served by the parks. Active users of parks will be paired with control subjects who do not typically use parks, and their respective physical activity levels will be monitored for seven-day study periods by accelerometers, a type of pedometer worn on the hip that gauges physical movement.

Ultimately, the researchers will make policy recommendations for both new and existing parks. The project will have an advisory committee, including the director of DeKalb County Parks and Recreation, the director of City of Decatur Parks and Recreation, and up to 11 additional representatives from EDAW Inc., PEDS (Pedestrian Advocacy), Georgia State Parks and Historic Sites, PEQ (Planners for Environmental Quality), Georgia Division of Public Health, Park Pride, DeKalb County Commissioners and Planning Director, and Peter Hand and Associates, as well as interested citizens.

Other members of the research team in addition to Dr. Frumkin are: Karen Mumford, PhD, a member of the public service faculty at the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government; Amy Helling, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Public Administration and Urban Studies at Georgia State University's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies; Howard W. Kohl, III, PhD, an epidemiologist in the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion; Steven P. French, PhD, director of the Center for Geographic Information Systems in Georgia Tech's College of Architecture; Lance Waller, PhD, associate professor of biostatistics in Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health; and Steve Dempsey, EdD, senior public service associate in the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government.

ABOUT ACTIVE LIVING RESEARCH

Active Living Research is a $12.5-million national program of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, created to stimulate and support research that will identify environmental factors and policies that influence physical activity.

ABOUT THE ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, based in Princeton, NJ, is the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care. It concentrates its grantmaking in four goal areas: to assure that all Americans have access to quality health care at reasonable cost; to improve the quality of care and support for people with chronic health conditions; to promote healthy communities and lifestyles; and to reduce the personal, social and economic harm caused by substance abuse -- tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs.

For more information, or to contact Emory University, see their website at: whsc.emory.edu