Policy

This Health Impact Assessment (HIA) includes opinions of residents near the proposed routes gathered through community meetings and focus groups, and existing census data and health surveys to make projections on how the two potential light-rail routes will affect physical activity and obesity due to possible increased walking. Increased access to health services is another factor to be measured.

With the Open Streets project we sought to measure the successes and challenges related to the St. Louis Open Streets and Ferguson (MO) Sunday Parkways .

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) created the Physical Activity Policy Research Network (PAPRN) in October of 2004 to study the effectiveness of health policies related to increasing physical activity in communities.

The Policies for Action Research Hub co-located at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Institute for Health Research and Policy and the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis will examine nutrition and activity-related policy implementation efforts and/or policy impacts on institutions and systems serving children and adolescents as well as on their diet and activity-related outcomes.

The purpose is to develop and disseminate approaches that will increase the use of proven policies at the local-level to reduce obesity disparities and promote health equity.

The SCOPE project compares legislative databases for comprehensiveness and usability; researches state childhood obesity legislation and the predictors of enactment; and interviews state legislators to determine barriers and facilitators of introducing and enacting legislation relevant to childhood obesity.

The purpose of Project STRIDE (STRategies In Disseminating Evidence for Chronic Disease Prevention) is to learn how best to support state health departments in building capacity for and use of evidence-based decision making in population-based prevention of cancer and other chronic diseases.