A research review identified in this week's news/reports describes how cooperation between governments, municipalities and school boards is required if schools are going to be able to get beyond projects and "passive" responses to this intervention that has the most impact on daily physical actiivity among students. Without this type of cooperation, it is unlikely that exhortations to parents to forget about those challenges (and sometimes legal charges) and let their children freely walk to school. This evidence review was done for the education ministry of Ontario, Canada. It assessed the impact of adopting active school transportation policies within governments, municipalities and school boards. "The searches of health, education and sports databases identified 608 abstracts. Governments have increased their focus on increasing both active travel to school and physical activity. Many US states have policies. that may impact active travel in school in addition to the Safe Routes to School SRTS program. Six categories of state statutory (legislative) and administrative (regulatory) laws were examined (minimum busing distance, hazardous route exemptions to the distance requirement (hazards, traffic or unsafe crossing), sidewalk requirements near schools, crossing guards, traffic control measures (e.g., speed bumps) and speed zones around schools." All of these measures had some effect. "The odds of having walking school bus (WSB) program is significantly associated with district policies and a state law requiring crossing guards. However, none of the other state law variables were strongly associated with a WSB program. There is limited literature that assesses the impact of municipalities adopting active transportation policies, which is often associated with millions of funding invested. Further research is needed." Read more >> (An item from the ISHN Member information service)
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