The nation, with Delaware being no exception, faces a number of pressing issues. Healthcare
costs are spiraling out of control. Energy costs, particularly fossil fuel costs, have proven highly
volatile and are inexorably trending higher. These, along with a number of other factors, have
put state budgets under increasing pressure. Concurrently, America has been facing an obesity
epidemic, which a preponderance of research concludes is a key driver of healthcare costs,
second only to tobacco use. Unfortunately, Delaware’s students constitute the norm rather than
the exception.
Though most born prior to 1940 and a good portion of the baby-boomer generation will proudly recall “walking uphill in the snow to and from school,” this is no longer the case for our state’s students and, in many cases, was not for their parents either.
In response, many states began Safe Routes to School (SRTS) initiatives, designed to identify and mitigate barriers to students’ ability to walk/cycle to school and increase incidence of walking and physical activity. In Delaware’s SRTS program, participating schools poll their students pre- and post-intervention to determine any change in walking rates. However, there was no baseline for comparison.
This project’s purpose was to provide that baseline for the state and each county through analysis of survey data collected from parents of school-aged children living within walking distance of school. Understanding why parents would either allow or not allow their children to walk or bicycle to school was also an area of interest.
