Health advocates blanket Congress with health & transportation message
October 19, 2009By Sean Barry
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| 139 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America |
| Dr. Richard Jackson speaks at the podium, flanked by Dr. Georges Benjamin, left, Shireen Malekafzali, Dr. Joe Thompson, James Corless, and Julia Lopez. More info about the speakers can be found in our press release. |
Our transportation investments and the built environment — what we build and where — have an enormous impact on our health and the cost of our health care.
With the debate over health care reform dominating the news daily, Transportation for America and coalition members from across the country took that powerful — yet often ignored or neglected — message to Capitol Hill leaders.
T4 America’s “health fly-in” last Friday connected health professionals and advocates from across the country with their Congressional representatives to highlight the impact that transportation has on our health and wellness.
T4 America kicked off the day with a briefing from campaign director James Corless and four other nationally recognized experts on health and transportation. Then, participants from across the country, from the Pacific Northwest to New England, split up and took the message to their representatives, visiting a total of 37 Congressional offices.
Among the 25 participants in the fly-in, six hailed from national groups and 19 from state and local organizations. Several, including fourteen-year-old childhood wellness advocate Julia Lopez and UCLA professor Dr. Richard Jackson, traveled all the way from California. (Look for a full list of organizations at the bottom of the post)
During the meetings, advocates discussed how the built environment — where we live, work and play — has a profound impact on obesity rates, diabetes, asthma and other quality of life measures. And they discussed policy prescriptions that can increase walkability, grow transit ridership and make physical activity a normal part of our daily routine.
“As a pediatrician and child advocate, my job is to do what I can to make sure as many kids as possible live healthy lives, and the biggest threats to them at this time are injuries — both violent and unintentional — and obesity,” said Dr. Katherine Kaufer Christoffel, a medical and research director at Northwestern University.
“This active transportation stuff really gets at all of those things.”
Dr. Joe Thompson, Director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center to Prevent Childhood Obesity, participated as a briefing panelist but did not attend Congressional meetings. Thompson serves as the Surgeon General of the State of Arkansas, where an alarming 22 percent of children are obese and 40 percent are overweight. Thompson said the built environment is a critical component of America’s livelihood.
“If we don’t solve the upstream causes of health problems, we won’t be able to hold health care reform together,” he said.
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| 207 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America |
| 14 year-old health advocate Julia Lopez chats with attendees of the health fly-in after making a few remarks. |
Noelle Dobson, Director of the Healthy Eating Active Living initiative at Portland’s Community Health Partnership, has been stressing the link between health and transportation through her work preparing health impact assessments for new development projects.
“This is all public health has ever been about for me,” she said.
T4 America and participating advocates were promoting three important pieces of legislation that address the health and transportation connection.
One is CLEAN-TEA, a Senate bill that would allocate ten percent of revenue from climate legislation toward clean transportation, walking and biking, and other modes that can help reduce emissions. The second is the National Transportation Objectives Act, which would create explicit, specific targets and benchmarks for the transportation bill, including goals like reducing CO2 from transportation by 40%, eliminating at-risk exposure to pollution, and tripling the amount of walking and biking we do. Lastly is Complete Streets legislation to make our streets safe and accommodating for all users and people — bus riders, bicyclists and pedestrians.
Most fly-in participants met with their representatives’ transportation staffers, but a few were able to meet face-to-face with the representatives themselves. Heidi Klein, a board member for the Vermont Public Health Association, got a few words in with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and two fly-in participants from Montana had the chance to meet their junior Senator, Democrat Jon Tester.
Other office visits included Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Sen. Max Baucus of Montana.
Our thanks to the many advocates and supporters who worked very hard to take this crucial message to Capitol Hill.
Participating organizations:
- National Recreation and Park Association
- National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity
- Campaign to End Obesity
- American Public Health Association
- American Lung Association
- PolicyLink
- National Complete Streets Coalition
- Trust for America’s Health
- America Bikes
- Safe Routes to School
- State and Territorial Injury Prevention Directors Association (STIPDA)
Improving access to healthcare by improving transportation options
July 17, 2009By Lilly Shoup
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| Photo by Dan Burden |
Yesterday we noted transportation’s impact on health care costs, and how expanding access to public transportation and investing more money in complete streets safe for walking and biking can improve overall health and lower healthcare costs.
At the same time, we should remember that having transportation options and the ability to easily get where you need to go have a huge impact on whether or not you receive care. Folks who can’t get to the doctor or who must wait on rides from family and friends are more likely to stay sick.
A study of over 1,059 households in 12 western North Carolina counties tests the relationship between transportation options and healthcare utilization while adjusting for the effects of personal characteristics, health characteristics, and distance. The report found that people with reliable access to healthcare visited their doctor 2.29 times more frequently for serious illness and 1.92 times more frequently for regular checkups than those who did not.
The ability to reliably and affordably make it to doctor’s visits or healthcare appointments is also a matter of transportation equity. Minorities, households in rural areas, the disabled, and low-income Americans face even greater hurdles because many cannot drive and public transportation is often unavailable, inaccessible or unreliable. (Not to mention public transportation, paratransit or dial-a-ride programs being cut left and right)
We already know Americans are tired of being stuck in traffic and are clamoring for more options for getting around. But they are also demanding prevention as a top health care reform priority, and overwhelmingly support increasing funding for prevention programs to reduce disease and keep people healthy.
Meeting the health care needs of all Americans will require funding infrastructure projects that can create more opportunities for physical activity. The healthcare bill Congress is currently working on is just another opportuniy to demand that transportation options and access issues are more broadly included in the debate. It is not just the cost of care, but the ability to access that care that’s proven to reduce hospitalization rates for chronic conditions.
Does transportation have an impact on growing health care costs?
July 16, 2009By Stephen Lee Davis
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| Albuquerque8 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America |
| Streets safe for walking and biking — especially streets that encourage incidental exercise by encouraging walking or biking — can help residents be more healthy, lowering the health care costs associated with obesity and inactivity. |
With Congress directing their attention to the contentious debate over health care reform and how to pay for it, it seems that transportation has been relegated to the back burner. In the meantime, evidence is continuing to mount that transportation investments — what we build and where — have an enormous impact on our health and the financial bottom line of providing health care.
Last week the California Center for Public Health Advocacy (CCPHA) released The Economic Costs of Overweight, Obesity and Physical Inactivity Among California Adults. In a state making national headlines for its current budget crisis, the study found that (in 2006) “overweight, obesity and physical inactivity cost the state $41.2 billion – $21.0 billion for overweight and obesity, and $20.2 billion for physical inactivity.”
An even more shocking recent study found that the already-dangerous effects of air pollution are magnified for pregnant women living near busy roads.
According to this study from a team of researchers from the University of California, Irvine, exposure to traffic-generated air pollution during pregnancy increases the risk of preeclampsia and premature birth. The study examined over 80,000 birth records and found that the risk of the life-threatening condition preeclampsia increased 33% and the risk of premature birth rose 128% in women living closest to congested corridors.
Many other negative health effects from vehicle emissions, congestion and air pollution have already been documented — with low-income and minority populations typically experiencing the most harmful side effects due to where interstates and highways get built.
The CCPHA report on obesity included some concrete policy recommendations for improving public health, a few of which are connected to our transportation spending decisions.
- Locate residential, commercial and office buildings close together so more residents can walk and bike to meet their daily needs
- Build neighborhoods with safe and attractive parks and other places for recreational exercise
- Create transportation corridors that support pedestrians and bicyclists
Including some realistic goals for improving public health in the transportation bill — one of T4 America’s six national transportation objectives for the bill — would be a great place to start. If we’re ever going to truly move away from a prescriptive health care model to a preventative model — saving us billions in health care costs — we’re going to have to address more than just the skyrocketing costs of treating illnesses and diseases — we’re going to have to look upstream and address some of the contributing factors.
Doing so could keep us healthier and save us billions.
With research from Becca Homa
Today’s Headlines — 06/18/09
June 18, 2009By Andrew Bielak
- The Economist looks ahead at the transportation bill and talks to T4 America Campaign Director James Corless.
- Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood asks for an 18-month extension on the current transportation bill, as Rep. James Oberstar releases an outline of a new one. (Wall Street Journal)
- Streetsblog breaks down Oberstar’s outline.
- A new study shows that sidewalks encourage walking and make us healthier.
Today’s Headlines — 06/02/09
June 2, 2009By Andrew Bielak
- With revenue for federal transportation falling fast, lawmakers face a major challenges in funding the next transportation bill. (The Hill)
- The New York Times reviews a new book on how cyclists are altering the landscape of American cities.
- Southern Florida’s Tri-Rail system faces major cuts and the possibility of being completely shut down by 2011. (Miami Herald)
- A new study from the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Environmental Health shows sprawling development puts kids’ health at risk. (Virginian Pilot)
Breaking Down the Blueprint: Improving public health and safety with a 21st Century transportation program
May 22, 2009By Andrew Bielak
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Earlier this week, we talked with you about Transportation for America’s national objective for a healthier, safer transportation system, and showed you the performance targets needed to measure our progress towards these goals.
Today, we’d like to talk about just how we hope to reach these goals through some of the policies and reforms that we propose in our Blueprint.
As some of you probably know, trying to understand federal transportation, and the programs, funding mechanisms, and institutional structures behind it, is no day at the beach — these policy details are complex, confusing, and sometimes, pretty boring. In an effort to create a more coherent national vision for our transportation system, T4 America has drafted a simple and clear set of targets and programs in our Blueprint, which we believe can serve as a more accessible guide for the future of transportation policy.
While the programs throughout the entire Blueprint encourage and incentivize investment in safer roads for all users, more walkable, bikeable communities, and cleaner air, we thought we’d focus here on a couple policies and priorities that exemplify our commitment to improving safety and public health.
(Continue Reading)
Breaking Down the Blueprint: T4’s Objective for Improved Public Health and Safety
May 20, 2009By Stephen Lee Davis
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When we think about our daily commutes to work, walks to the grocery store, or bus rides our kids take to school, there are few things more important than making sure these activities keep us healthy and safe.
After all, the numbers related to these issues are simply staggering — more than 37,000 people killed on our roads in 2008, between $40 and $60 billion in annual health care costs from negative air quality associated with transportation, more than 16 percent of children, and 66 percent of adults, considered overweight or obese due in large part due to a lack of physical activity.
Transportation for America believes that a renewed transportation system must Ensure Safety for All Transportation Users and Improve Public Health Outcomes — a goal that will require some critical changes in the way we approach transportation policy. For that reason, we’ve made it one of six top-line objectives in our Blueprint.
(Continue Reading)
Do cars make us fat?
October 7, 2008By Andrew Bielak
It’s not too difficult to spot the connection between Americans’ worsening obesity problem and an overreliance on automobiles. (No Impact Man — Colin Beavan)
Study: As gas prices go up, auto deaths drop
July 21, 2008By Andrew Bielak
Authors of a new study say that for every 10 percent increase in gas prices, there has been a 2.3 percent drop in auto deaths due to fewer drivers on the road — a trend that could result in one third fewer deaths each year. (Associated Press — Joan Lowy)
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- T4 America co-chair testifies before Senate on rural transportation
March 18, 2010 - Atlanta-area transit system 14 days from shutting down, 2 million rides disappearing
March 17, 2010 - U.S. Transportation Department makes good on promise to ensure our streets are made safer
March 16, 2010 - Obama’s livability programs help rural America too
March 16, 2010 - Transit grants out the federal door, but what about the cuts?
March 8, 2010
- T4 America co-chair testifies before Senate on rural transportation
The United States of Transit Cutbacks
Driving is down and transit ridership is at record highs. Yet transit agencies across the country are considering layoffs, service cuts and fare hikes. Find out more and learn what you can do to help at t4america.org/transitcuts
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