Transcript: Building equitable parks
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This is The Nation's Health podcast. In 2022, the American Public Health Association is celebrating its 150th anniversary. The association is taking time throughout the year to reflect on its mission and priorities. As part of that effort, members of APHA staff have taken to the mic to gain insight from public health workers who are contributing to the goal of creating the healthiest nation.
This is The Nation's Health podcast and I'm your host for this episode, Mighty Fine. I'm the director of the Center for Public Health Practice and professional development at APHA. I'm so thrilled to be joined today by Dr. Jennifer Roberts, who's an associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. Today, Jen and I will be talking about parks and access to green spaces as it relates to chronic disease prevention.
So, Jen, thank you again for joining us today and let's just get right into it. Parks and communal green spaces are valuable spaces for recreation that encourage exercise and play and may help individuals manage chronic physical and mental health conditions. Think about like high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and we can go on and on. So how can public health organizations work together with community organizers and maybe other partners to ensure that people from all zip codes have equitable access to parks?
I think it's important that we acknowledge that most of us like about 85% of adults actually do think that access to high quality parks and recreational programs is important and there should be fair access but and it is a big but communities of color. Distinctly Hispanic Black and Asian communities are nearly three times more likely to reside and nature deprived areas for those that don't have like a park or trail or green space in comparison to predominantly white community communities. And then also this disparity falls along income line, so the majority of low-income communities also live in deprived areas. And then when there is a park it's usually half a small or served probably four times as many people.
And so we saw issues of this particularly as the pandemic was unfolding where CDC was like, ‘hey, to be safe and to help deal with your cabin fever and the folks in your house. Go to a local park.’ And people were flooding to the park where we saw that the parks you know, become a little bit unsafe because they were becoming really, really crowded. And so, to answer your question, I kind of think of like there's like eight things that really should be considered when parks and recreational leaders as well as community organizations are trying to brainstorm to ensure that there is equitable access to parks and some of these I kind of borrow from the Urban Institute as well as Urban Land Institute.
But there's kind of eight things that I kind of really honed in and resonated with me. The first was really understanding the company's priority. So, every locality is different from the next and that will determine how their spaces are used and if the environment reflects the community's interest and priorities. And so you really want to engage residents in the community in the process of whether you're developing a new green space of her or even in just the maintenance and the ongoing day to day, upkeep of it and how you program the park. And so, you want to make sure you have this engagement, but you also have to make sure you build this relationship so not like this kind of helicopter flying type of snow and you want to really empower and engage the community, really truly listen support to what they what their needs are. Because they may be a little bit hesitant because they you know some of the communities particularly if you have multiple generations with any company, they may have remembered the decades of disinvestment and were left out of the decisionmaking process so you kind of have to rebuild that trust a little bit.
The second is identify champions within the community across all sectors that can like uplift parks, and make sure that people understand that it's really an essential service essential part of our health and wellbeing also for our social capital. Also, for overall economic benefits, and many other things. I'm actually working on a project now that just trying to see how the community would respond to if we put Wi Fi within Watkins Park which is in Prince George's County, and a lot of parks around the country have kind of put Wi Fi and you think this is something that could remedy other issues that people may have a digital disparity and kind of remedy that digital divide. And so parks can really be essential for a variety of things. So, you want to make sure you have these champions so people can really kind of buy into this like ‘yeah, sure, this is kind of a necessity.’
And while you're also saying isn't necessity, you also don't want to not recognize the legacy of the racism and the discrimination that may have occurred in some of these same exact spaces. And how these places were not always welcoming for some communities you want to really understand it and recognize it and put it like don't try to sweep it under the rug, you know.
And so local leaders really can examine somehow some racist policies have kind of permeated through that public in green space, which can lead to the inequities that we see now then that can be addressed. And then also you want to combat like some of the narratives debunk some of the narratives that are bogus in terms of like, oh, black folks don't go to parks. Right, right. So, you want to really combat those narratives and talk about the spaces for everyone. So, it's not like this privilege for just some groups.
And this can be done by also highlighting some of the history, some of the history that we try to sweep under the rug, and recognizing, you know, we got to air out a laundry little bit or is, again, kind of empowering the community as co-creators, so you actually have a space that you didn't really think of as like outdoor space you kind of make have to be creative and have some visionaries, and this really bringing the community because then they can be like, well, you know what, I can make this particular I think there was a place in Los Angeles that did this, this parking lot. They were able to kind of change it put some green elements to it. Yes, it wasn't impervious surface. But they were able to have a space with Quinn was like, let's do this and let's do this. And so this also again, empowers the community
It even makes it more inviting, right so people actually want to go and congregate and fellowship.
Exactly, exactly. When you when you were part of the building of it. The other part comes also to money. So, the development of parks and spaces is really new. It's funded primarily through taxes and other appropriations. But we also want to make sure that we have funding to maintain it, because you don't want it to get raggedy after a couple seasons are yours. And that's where we also bring the community into because if they're looking at this park, they're going to make sure that it's taken care of because they'll have that ownership of it.
But there also has to be some funds available to make sure that we have you know we can take care of it and that it's a place that people want to keep coming to over and over again. Keep the program affordable.
So, this goes back to the bringing the community in again, that's kind of a constant theme. So, what programs do they want? Like do they want outdoor yoga or maybe they want outdoors? Ooh, but that also will be reflective of the of the community's culture. Right and exactly as to what they want. They may say, ‘well, I want to do something else,’ you know. And so, you want to make sure you understand what kind of programming they want. And make sure it's again affordable.
And then number seven, is again makes sure that the parks are interconnected with the people as a whole. So, you got to find a space that is geographically strategic to where people can access and this is particularly something that should be emphasized in areas that have been underserved or disinvested.
And there's this, obviously a long history of redlining. So obviously, areas that were previously redlined they were like, well, we don't really care about putting parks in there. We're gonna make sure we put the parks in the green in the other areas. So they were consistently disinvested. So you may not always have a readily available space. So, you may have to kind of strategically find a new space this goes back to her kind of being a visionary. And the community can also help with this because they know that they can be inserted out better than someone who's coming in from the outside.
And then the Oh, and then also kind of going back to reimagining what a park is and reimagining and reconceptualizing what a park space is, you know it may not always be all grass, but it may be Park grass and this and that kind of comes back to when you bring the community, they can help you brainstorm that. And then finally you want to evaluate you want to make sure that he does all these measures and maybe even more, that it is equitable. So, you have you know, evaluation every season every year to see who's coming to the park. You know, all of a sudden you see oh, well now it looks like it's 90% of people coming from another whole community. Anything like these folks here.
So, you know, you got to go back to the drawing board and be like, OK, where do we, you know, where can we improve? So I think all of those kinds of sticks can help empower and make sure a space can be equitable, and welcoming for the community.
Awesome. Thank you for that. I think those are eight great points that folks listening and can take back as they're thinking about programs and other initiatives that the developing to certainly consider.
And with that, we thank them for their conversation. For more information about how APHA is celebrating. Its 150th anniversary visit www.apha.org. This has been The Nation's Health podcast.
For more coverage on all things public health visit www.thenationshealth.org