Do State Comprehensive Planning Statutes Address Physical Activity?: Implications for Rural Communities

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Samantha I. Moyers¹  Christiaan G. Abildso¹  Lisa M. Charron²  Jamie F. Chriqui³  Chloe Milstein³ 

[1] Department of Social and Behavioral Health Sciences, School of Public Health, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA;Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA;School of Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60612, USA;

关键词: physical activity;    rural;    policy;    comprehensive plan;    built environment;    urban planning;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijerph182212190

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Less than one-quarter of U.S. adults meet physical activity (PA) recommendations, with rural residents less likely to be active than urban residents. The built environment has been identified as a potential facilitator of PA and local comprehensive plans are a foundational tool for guiding the development of the built environment. The purpose of this study was therefore to understand the current landscape of comprehensive planning state statutes related to PA and rural communities. We used primary legal research methods to identify, compile, and evaluate all 50 state comprehensive planning statutes for items related to PA and conditional mandates based on population size of local jurisdictions. The presence of population-conditional planning mandates and the inclusion of PA-related items was analyzed by state-level rurality using Fisher’s exact tests. Our analyses demonstrated that (1) broader PA-related items were addressed in state statutes more often than more specific PA-related items; (2) when PA-related items were addressed, they were most likely to be mandated, subsumed elements; (3) several PA-related items were less likely to be addressed in the most rural states and/or conditionally mandated for jurisdictions meeting minimum population requirements; and (4) only two states addressed PA directly and explicitly in their comprehensive planning statutes.

【 授权许可】

Unknown