At the next Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods (PRCHN) seminar, Barb Clint of the YMCA of Greater Cleveland and Jacob VanSickle of Bike Cleveland will discuss “Active Transportation as a Health Equity Strategy.”
This session will be held Wednesday, Feb. 8, from noon to 1:15 p.m. in the ground floor conference room of the BioEnterprise Building.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, active transportation is any self-propelled, human-powered mode of transportation, such as walking and bicycling. Because physical inactivity is a known major contributor to obesity and a risk factor for chronic disease conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, it is critical to ensure that our environment is designed to provide safe and convenient active transportation opportunities.
The talk will highlight opportunities for population-level active transportation locally. Clint and VanSickle will discuss how Cleveland could be transformed to be more bike-friendly.
Cleveland has a system of overly wide and under-utilized streets that can, at relatively modest cost, be converted to safely and comfortably accommodate active transportation users.
The Midway Protected Bike Boulevard Plan would reclaim former streetcar rights of way throughout the city for conversion to two-directional, landscape-buffered, center lane bike boulevards with a dedicated traffic signal system. The Cleveland City Planning Commission recently completed a yearlong study for the Midway proposal and identified numerous corridors throughout the city where it could be accommodated without disruption to automobile traffic flow.
In addition, Clint and VanSickle will review research compiled by the League of American Bicyclists for its 2013 report The New Majority: Pedaling Towards Equity.
Clint is the principal investigator for a CDC Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health program focused on active transportation and executive director of the Clevelanders in Motion Health Equity Branch of the YMCA of Greater Cleveland. Her work reflects the intersection between city planning and public health.
VanSickle serves as executive director of Bike Cleveland, an organization he co-founded. Prior to working at Bike Cleveland, he served as a community organizer in the Slavic Village neighborhood focused on active living and other issues.