Posted by:
Maya Mohan, Department of Public Health
Maya is the Physical Activity Coordinator for DPH.
…. is tomorrow! Do you remember walking to school while you were growing up? I was fortunate enough to live in an urban-ish kind of neighborhood where masses of kids walked to school daily, and that became its own social event - even before the school day started! As a kid, the health benefits didn’t occur to me, but I’m sure my parents were aware of them.
Over the years, there has been a steady decline in the number of schoolchildren that walk or bike to school on a regular basis. According to national statistics, in 1969, about 42% of students walked to school whereas today, less than 16% of students do! I can’t do the math at the moment, but that‘s a lot fewer kids walking to school - I do know that much.
In an effort to get back to those “good ole’ days” when walking and biking to school was a regular, everyday occurrence, a program was created to address both the environmental and behavioral aspects of this issue: Safe Routes to School (SRTS). This is a federally funded effort that provides resources to engage the local community in improving the physical infrastructure around the school to make the surrounding routes safer for students to walk and bike, as well increasing motorist, pedestrian and bicyclist education; providing encouragement to students to begin walking or biking as a daily habit; and ensuring adequate enforcement and evaluation of these efforts.
SRTS reduces traffic congestion and air pollution near participating schools and also increases the health, safety and physical activity of elementary and middle school students. Kids who participate in SRTS arrive at school ready to learn and are beginning to create healthy lifetime habits.
I am proud to say that MA has a fantastically robust Safe Routes to School program that is administered by the MassRIDES travel options program on behalf of the Executive Office of Transportation. 251 schools in 97 communities are part of the MA Safe Routes to School Program! Click here for a list of participating chools.
If you don’t see your school listed, click here to learn how to get the schools in your community signed up!
As I mentioned above - tomorrow is International Walk to School day. Click here to see MA communities that are participating. Maybe your child's school will be taking part in this event - if so, I hope you will consider joining them. You never know who may show up....like, Fox25News, for example! And, if your town doesn’t have a SRTS program - I urge you to join the millions of other parents and kids who are walking to school tomorrow and to then get your school signed up! It’s important to get our kids up and walking (or bicycling) to and from school again - not just for their own health, but for our community’s environmental health as well.
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