Family Health and Fitness Day and Park Exploration

Family Health and Fitness Day, created by the National Recreation and Park Association (NRPA), is celebrated annually on the second Saturday of June. Intended to show how important parks and recreation are to keeping their communities active and healthy, people are encouraged to visit their local parks to explore the recreational options available in their backyards. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, only one in three children are physically active every day and only one in three adults receive the recommended amount of physical activity each week. Parks can serve as local outlets for individual and community activities.

NRPA’s vision is that everyone has easy access to park and recreation opportunities in sustainable communities. To that end, they’ve partnered with the Trust for Public Land (TPL) in a nationwide movement called The 10-Minute Walk Campaign - ensuring that every person has a great park within a 10-minute walk. 

By visiting their site, www.tpl.org/10minutewalk, you can learn more about park access in your community. Seattle, for example, has a ParkScore ranking of 11. The TPL ParkScore rating is based on the following measures; access - the portion of residents within a 10-minute walk to a park, acreage - the median park size and percent of area dedicated to parks, community investment - park spending per resident, and available amenities - features like basketball hoops, playgrounds, and dog parks. 

In the interest of exploring issues of equity in access to parks and recreation, TPL takes their analysis even further by delving into park access by age, income, and race/ethnicity. All of these data points are available at the aggregate level, by city, and for each individual park.

Further, they use the data collected to make recommendations about where new parks might be best located, based on how many additional residents could be covered by the 10-minute walk radius, highlighting areas highest in need of funding and attention.

Clicking on an individual park polygon on the map will give you information about the service area within a 10-minute walk as well as a detailed report on the population being served by that location.

Want to quickly find the parks in your neighborhood? Check out the ParkServe webmap, created using TPL’s database of collected and user-added park locations, to find public parks near you. Click on any park location to find information about the name, owner, and address, where available. 

Jene Grandmont

Senior Manager, Application Development and Data Services, HealthLandscape