More than 80% of adults do not meet the guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities. Similarly, more than 80% of adolescents do not do enough aerobic physical activity to meet the guidelines for youth. Working together to meet Healthy People 2020 targets via a multidisciplinary approach is critical to increasing the levels of physical activity and improving health in the United States.

The Physical Activity objectives for Healthy People 2020 highlight how physical activity levels are positively affected by:

• Structural environments, such as the availability of sidewalks, bike lanes, trails, and parks
• Legislative policies that improve access to facilities that support physical activity

Healthy People 2020/Physical Activity: https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/physical-activity

• Healthy Active Arkansas
• Built Environment Committee of the Arkansas Coalition for Obesity Prevention
• Arkansas Department of Transportation
• Metroplan
• University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension

Built environment interventions to increase physical activity create or modify environmental characteristics in a community to make physical activity easier or more accessible.

Transportation system interventions include one or more policies and projects designed to increase or improve the following:

• Street connectivity
• Sidewalk and trail infrastructure
• Bicycle infrastructure
• Public transit infrastructure and access

Land use and environmental design interventions include one or more policies, designs, or projects to create or enhance the following:

• Mixed land use environments to increase the diversity and proximity of local destinations where people live, work, and spend their recreation and leisure time
• Access to parks, and other public or private recreational facilities

The Community Guide What Works: Increasing Physical Activity Evidence-Based Interventions for Your Community: 

 https://www.thecommunityguide.org/sites/default/files/assets/What-Works-Factsheet-PhysicalActivity.pdf

Strategy 1: Create comunities that are more connected and livable, incorporating mixed-use neighborhoods, safety, walkability and access to schools and other positive destinations.

Strategy 2: Encourage design principles that support a statewide healthy highways policy.

Strategy 3: Create a mindset that promotes lifelong physical activity.

Strategy 4: Promote formal shared-use agreements between communities and organizations such as schools and faith-based organizations to provide access to physical activity areas.

The CDPC Branch developed six videos to assist with community understanding complete streets policies and the process.  The videos are in Spanish and English: https://www.youtube.com/user/healthyArkansas and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNbQf-IDoj-TjoM8zE3KFhA

The Arkansas Statewide Master Bicycle and Pedestrian plan is located at this website:

https://www.arkansashighways.com/Trans_Plan_Policy/multimodal/bicycle_pedestrian_planning/Statewide%20Bike-Ped%20Trans%20Plan.pdf

A PowerPoint presentation highlighting some of the things accomplished are at https://www.arkansashighways.com/Trans_Plan_Policy/biking/Arkansas%20Bike-Ped%20Plan%20-%20FINAL%20-03312017.pdf .