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When community leaders brainwave ways to improve the health and well-being of youth and families, a team ordinarily brings together doctors and health maintenance professionals, hospitals, public health organizations and schools. But recreation and park agencies are another key player in the fight against childhood corpulency, sedentary lifestyles, and chronic diseases says a new report.
"Community refreshment and rosa Parks is the health provider that you don't know about," says Andrew Mowen, Ph.D., lead author and associate professor of recreation and park management at Penn State. "Traditionally, these agencies ar considered as organizers of games and sports in a town's parks or ball fields. But our study shows that 9 out of 10 refreshment and park professionals ar actively tangled in a health partnership, sometimes several of them."
Mowen and his research team conducted a nationwide survey of over 1,two hundred recreation and park administrators, who were members of the National Recreation and Park Association. Also, in-depth interviews were completed with 16 recreation professionals crosswise the United States in order to understand key themes and issues for the survey.
"Twenty years agone, health care providers didn't consider recreation and mungo Park professionals to be a partner in the campaigns to promote health. But in the 1990s, community-based health partnerships were starting to see the theatrical role of diversion and rosa Parks in promoting physical action and calibre of life, since many related programs are offered by recreation and park managers," aforesaid Geoffrey Godbey, co-principal investigator of the study, and professor emeritus in the recreation, park and tourism management department.
The study set up that 88 percent said their arrangement was involved in a health partnership, with an average of four partnerships per agency. The about common partners were schools, public wellness agencies and non-profit organizations.
Municipal recreation and parks agencies provide access to low-cost facilities such as ball fields, parks and walking trails for programs, which are highly visible and well known to local residents. Such agencies already reach stunned to at-risk groups targeted in health campaigns such as children, older adults, low-income and minority families.
"Health campaigns naturally involve recreation and parking area departments because they provide low-cost, close-to-home opportunities for physical activity, such as trails, recreation centers, outdoor courts, and outdoor liquid facilities," says Mowen. "Parks, trails and recreation centers can likewise serve as settings for physical rehabilitation."
Successful partnerships were likely to show high levels of trust among partner agencies, a recognized need for the quislingism, administrative supporting, and staff empowerment. Common health partnership challenges let in a want of sow funding, communication and turf issues, and garnering total support from community stakeholders such as local government or schooling board members. Despite these barriers, subject field results suggest that small, rural refreshment and park departments ar increasingly interested in organism an active health partnership participant.
"Having facilities is critical, but so, programs as well have to be effected to fetch in residents and encourage them to take part," say Mowen. "Partnerships that include after-school programs, diet and nutritional information, and policy efforts to promote recreational settings should be encouraged. "
"The study was designed to provide service line information on the state of current health partnership practices inside the profession, their successes and their challenges," says the Penn State researcher. "Such info can be used to help a community effectively develop a program in health and physical activity promotion."
Other study authors are Laura Payne, University of Illinois, and Elizabeth Oresega-Smith, University of Delaware.
The study was sponsored by the National Recreation & Park Association and supported with a ulysses Simpson Grant from the National Recreation Foundation.
Source:
Andrea Elyse Messer
Penn State
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