The Public Health Foundation (PHF) has partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to promote
Winnable Battles, public health priorities with large-scale impact on health and with known, effective strategies to address them. Regular
physical activity, an identified Winnable Battle, can help control weight and reduce the risk of chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Using evidence-based, scalable interventions such as those recommended in
The Community Guide can assist health departments, community-based organizations, and others expand access to places to engage the community in physical activities.
Examples of how the WalkWorks program incorporated these interventions include:
Community Wide Campaigns
- WalkWorks involved multiple community sectors including local government, education, transportation, and business.
- The highly visible, multi-component strategy employed by WalkWorks included social support, health education, and mass media. Messages to increase awareness of initiative and the benefits of physical activity were transmitted using outlets such as newspapers, radio, brochures, websites, and signage.
Social Support Interventions in Community Settings
- WalkWorks built and strengthened participants’ social systems to increase physical activity by establishing free guided walking groups.
- The buddy system was encouraged for individuals who were unable to participate in walking groups.
Community-Scale and Street-Scale Urban Design and Land Use Policies
- WalkWorks engaged transportation engineers at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering to assess walking routes and traffic patterns in several communities as well as provide technical assistance to county planning commissions related to environmental enhancements to support pedestrian transportation.
- WalkWorks influenced local and county policy change related to pedestrian transportation.
Enhance Access to Places for Physical Activity
- WalkWorks coalitions engaged worksites, community groups, schools, and health care providers to create opportunities for physical activity.
- Access to places for physical activity was enhanced by identifying, mapping, marking, and promoting walking routes in local communities and parks.
WalkWorks demonstrated the importance of leveraging multi-sector partnerships to help reduce health burdens from a lack of physical activity. Utilizing these partnerships was a priority for the University of Pittsburgh during the design and implementation of WalkWorks. As a result of using these evidence-based approaches, the WalkWorks program successfully created 28 walking routes across six counties, developed relationships within local communities and across multiple sectors, organized walking events for 1,400 children and adult participants, and gathered success stories from each county that participated. Residents in the six Pennsylvania counties have also made positive and healthy changes by increasing their activity levels by walking independently and by keeping up with the walking groups.
“WalkWorks provided us with an excellent opportunity to translate research to practice as we developed and implemented this community-based initiative. We were also pleased to be able to support our Dean’s interest in aligning the resources of the University with public health activities in the region,” said Margaret A. Potter, JD, MA, Director of the Center for Public Health Practice and Associate Dean of Practice at the University of Pittsburgh, who served as the Principal Investigator of the WalkWorks program.
Physical activity is just one of the 19 topic areas covered in
The Community Guide and one of CDC's Winnable Battles. See how PHF is assisting with
building awareness and knowledge of CDC’s Winnable Battles. You can also use
resources from PHF's Online Store,
courses from TRAIN, and
other tools offered through PHF to help you build capacity in related areas.