Leadership for Active Living

Healthy Community Design Program

Project Overview

This project was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Active Living Program.

Healthy community design emphasizes how transportation, land use, agriculture and education policies can encourage routine physical activity and make healthy foods accessible and affordable to children and families, especially in low-income minority communities. This project is intended to broaden state legislators' awareness of the relationships among policies from separate jurisdictions-health, environment, transportation, community design, agriculture and education-and how, if crafted in an integrated manner, such policies can more effectively promote physical activity and a healthy diet to achieve public health benefits. Legislative committees and state and local agencies often are structured to consider policies and programs that are topic-specific rather than cross-cutting and collaborative. For example, environment committee members who are working on growth management may have no idea that working with the education committee on school facility placement can help design residential and commercial areas where walking and biking become an integral part of the community fabric.

Active Living Leadership is a national project supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The Initiative is a partnership effort of the Council of State Governments, International City/County Management Association, Local Government Commission, National Association of Counties, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, National League of Cities, and the United States Conference of Mayors in collaboration with the American Association of School Administrators.

Active Living Leadership has a few excellent resources on active living that we have made available here.

Healthy Community Design Success Stories from State and Local Leaders

This is a good overview of how different municipalities and regions in the U.S. have incorporated healthy community design into their communities, read this document from Active Living Leadership that details how different community leaders have worked to create active living landscapes in their towns and cities through unique partnerships and creative thinking.

Health Primer on Active Living for Government Officials
(When printing this document set paper size to "legal" and page orientation to "landscape")

This short document explains what "Active Living" is, why it is important, and resources and ideas for government officials to help encourage active living.

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