Want a behind the scenes glance at some of the reasons for our success in Minnesota around Safe Routes to School? Then check out this great article on the success of our coalition work around obesity prevention.
Minnesota: Building Coalitions to Improve Public Health
One way to encourage children and youth to be more physically active, and thereby helping to reduce obesity rates, is to make sure they can exercise safely, particularly in low-income minority communities. This is the central premise of the
Safe Routes to School(SRTS) movement. Funded by the federal transportation bill, SRTS helps communities make it safer for students to walk and bike to school. The program is so popular in Minnesota that yearly funding requests have outstripped available dollars by as much as 5 to 1.
This demand, combined with a reduction in federal funding for the SRTS program as well as changes in the way that funding is allocated, caused a broad coalition of health advocates in Minnesota to begin a campaign in 2012 to fund a Minnesota-based SRTS program.
"The Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota reached out to the Minnesotans for Healthy Kids Coalition to partner on establishing a state Safe Routes to School program," says Rachel Callanan, regional vice president of advocacy for the American Heart Association’s Midwest Affiliate. "We knew from the federal funding applications that demand was strong. We tapped this unmet demand to build a strong coalition." Read more here.
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