Surgeon General's Call To Action: Walkability

Recently, the Surgeon General of the United States released a Call To Action To Promote Walking and Walkable Communities. Although this report is lengthy and includes a wide variety of suggested tools to encouraging walking from a public health prospective, there is one particular topic that I found very applicable for this course.

The Surgeon General went on to illustrate and explain that post-WWII America has fallen into a trap of the over-developed, low-density and car-dependent communities that we better know as suburbia. Although it would be politically incorrect for the US government to discount suburban developments, they still are able to make a call-to-action that identifies the problems associated with car-dependent suburbia, which in this case contributes to the lack of  walkability.

Prior to the Surgeon General being the voice of public health for the United States Federal Government, she performed a lot of public health work in New Orleans where walkable neighborhoods were seen as a critical component in determining the overall health of a community.

I believe this call-to-action is such a big statement for advocates of sustainability, healthy communities and subsequently walkability. There are so many positive outcomes that stem from having walkable streets besides public health, such as reduced auto-mobile traffic, reduced CO2 emissions from auto-mobiles, an increased demand for urban revitalization. The list goes on. Of course, promoting walkable communities is just one component of this historical call-to-action. How else can we promote walking?

Read and see what you think: http://www.ajmc.com/focus-of-the-week/0915/surgeon-general-urges-americans-to-walk-more-to-combat-chronic-disease