This is the latest plan for a grant proposal that would allow us to

work with high school kids, doing research in the community and generating

public products for the website that they have been building at www.princegeorges.org.

It is important for people to consume healthy food: products that are

low-fat, high-fiber, varied, and cooked with fresh ingredients. It is

also important for people to walk to work or to school and to complete

routine errands such as food shopping on foot—if the local streets

are safe. This is because regular activity plus healthy nutrition decreases

the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes and may relieve depression

and obesity.

Promoting healthy nutrition and walking is especially important today,

since obesity is increasing at an alarming rate, above all among adolescents.

Also, physical activity is lower among minorities and people with lower

education levels and less income.

A standard approach is to educate people to live more active

lifestyles, but such efforts tend to be disappointing. Changes in the

environment are more promising. To find out what environmental factors

influence whether people walk, consume healthy food, and (specifically)

walk to purchase healthy food, we will first survey a large sample of

students about their own nutrition and exercise within the preceding

24 hours. They will be asked exactly where they walked during that period

(i.e., the addresses or names of the places they visited). The respondents’

home addresses will also be collected, along with some demographic information.

This survey will allow us to estimate the distance that each student

walked using GIS methods, without relying on their own approximations.

Under our direction, a smaller group of high school and college students

will then collect data on the walkability of local streets; the danger

of crime on those streets; and the availability, cultural characteristics,

and price of healthy food in the community. To collect some of these

data, students will walk around the neighborhood with Palm Pilots, filling

in a field survey. The data that they collect will be layered onto a

GIS map. The most useful parts of this map (for example, the locations

of healthy food sources) will be made public on the website.

By combining these two sets of data—on student behaviors and

home addresses; and on local physical features—we hope to develop

a mathematical model that shows the relationships between active lifestyles

and specific aspects of the local environment

We hypothesize that it is not only the proximity of healthy food sources

that increases the chance that people will walk to these sources and

consume healthy food. It also matters how safe the streets are between

the person’s home and the store or restaurant; the price and cultural

attractiveness of food at that establishment; the concentration of stores

near the destination; and other variables that have never been studied

together in projects of this kind.

I’m busy trying to raise money for the Prince

George’s Information Commons, our project that helps local kids

use the Internet for civic purposes. There’s one specific grant opportunity

that I want to go after, and it has a Sept. 2 deadline.

Given the terms of the grant opportunity ("research in active

living"), I can imagine us doing these three things:

1. We could help kids to map the walkable streets, parks, and healthy

food sources of the r community, so that we can investigate whether

that kind of research makes adolescents more aware of health issues,

more prone to healthy behavior, and more civically engaged. Our method

would be to give them (and a control group) questionnaires both before

and after the course, and measure the change.

2. We could help kids to produce public documents—such as maps,

brochures, website materials—that advertise the health assets

in the community, and investigate whether these materials lead to positive

health outcomes in the school or community. Our method would be to give

students in a set of classes a questionnaire, then expose them to the

materials that our kids create, and then survey them again.

3. We could use the data that the kids collect to generate genuine

research findings of value to other communities.

I’m convinced that the funder actually wants #3, and it’s the hardest

item for me to conceive. We could say that we will collect baseline

data on walkability, nutritional quality, and crime, and use these data

for research purposes—but I doubt that that’s specific enough.

We could say that we will investigate whether proximity to healthy assets

correlates with good health, controlling for lots of stuff, but I’m

not sure that kind of correlational research is rigorous enough. We

could say that we will resurvey the neighborhood periodically to establish

how much change occurs in walkability and other health variables. But

I’m not sure how interesting the mere rate of change would be. Or we

could say that we will use specific changes in the community as "natural

experiments." But then I think we need to describe one likely change

that we will be able to investigate. I haven’t thought of one yet.

At

several meetings that I have attended recently, I’ve heard about young people

or poor people who have "documented" some asset, problem, or activity.

It occurs to me that academics and other professional researchers "document"

things only as a first stage in research (if they do it at all). Their real interests

are comparing, assessing, and explaining phenomena, not merely listing or portraying

them. I understand why disdavantaged people stick to documentation; it requires

fewer skills and resources. But much more power comes with assessment and explanation.

I’m starting to think that the rich do research while the poor get "documentation."

The solution is to try to involve young people, poor people, and other disadvantaged

folks in real research, whenever possible.

In this connection: a colleague

of mine has Palm Pilots with database software installed. We’re going to lend

them to high school kids, whom we’ll train to walk around the neighborhood conducting

surveys of physical assets. The data they collect can then be used to generate

maps, which we will post for public use on the Prince

Georges Information Commons site. Later, we’ll help the kids use the data

they collect for genuine research.

The topic that we’re planning to study

is "healthy living," which includes:

1. exercise and "walkability"
2.

security from crime, and
3. nutrition

All of these factors can be placed

on the same maps, so that it’s possible to see, for example, where there are sources

of healthy food that are also safe and walkable.

We’re going to start with walkability and crime. Walkability is relatively

easy because there is a standard survey instrument that kids can easily

use to determine whether each street segment is walkable. It’s very

straightforward for the kids to create a map with the walkable streets

colored in and the unwalkable ones left white (or something like that).

They just walk down a street and fill out a checklist on a Palm Pilot.

We can simultaneously work on crime. One idea would be to try to get

actual crime statistics from the police and add them to the map. Apparently,

police departments do not like to release these data—although maybe

we could overcome that problem. Another option would look like this:

The kids would take digital photos of places that they consider very

dangerous, and very safe. They would compare and discuss their pictures.

They would then show their collected pictures of safe and unsafe places

to experts, such as police officers and criminologists, who would offer

their opinions. Once the kids had reflected on their choices, they would

declare certain areas to be relatively safe and unsafe, and mark the

map accordingly.

Here’s my latest scheme for

local civic work, connected to the Prince

George’s Information Commons. We would train young people to rate local food

sources (both shops and restaurants) for healthiness. We would then generate an

online map of the healthiest places in the community to buy food. This map would

be our direct public service. Meanwhile, we would use the data in combination

with local health statistics to test these hypotheses:

• It is good

  for your health to live near a source of healthy food.

• It is bad for your

  health to live near a source of unhealthy food.

• It is bad for your health

  to live near no food sources (because then you have to drive and don’t get exercise).

No

doubt, healthy food outlets tend to locate near healthy populations, so we’d have

to be careful before drawing the conclusion that the presence of a health-food

store explains the good health of its neighborhood. But with the appropriate

statistical controls, we might discover that the availability of various kinds

of food does matter for health—and that would be useful for planners to know.

Yesterday, our high school class interviewed a 30-year veteran teacher

at their school, mainly about racial issues. He said—among other

things—that people in his home county (Montgomery, MD) read, whereas

young people in Prince George’s do not. They just watch television, he

said; and if they read, it’s "trash." Montgomery is predominantly

White; Prince George’s is majority Black. After he left, I asked the students

what they thought about this particular comment. Some were evidently offended

and suspected that the teacher was relying on racial stereotypes. Others

thought that he was factually correct. We held a debate on the question:

"Do people read more in Montgomery?" I said that I honestly

didn’t know, but that I wouldn’t jump to conclusions just because Montgomery

is whiter and richer than Prince George’s. One male student who was offended

by the comparison said that girls read in Prince George’s—although

boys don’t. This comment received a lot of assent.