Today the Northfield area submitted its grant proposal to the Safe Routes to Schools program, which in Minnesota is administered by our state Department of Transportation. Our proposal is for what is called a “non-infrastructure” grant. That is, we’re not proposing to build anything with the money we might receive. Instead we would use the money to do planning and technical analysis of safe routes around schools and to create educational, encouragement, law enforcement, and evaluation programs that support children walking and biking to school.

Our proposed project is called “Pathways to Healthier Students (PaTHS): Planning Enhanced Access to Northfield Schools.” The proposal asks for $15,000 for the planning/technical analysis component (most of which would be used to hire an engineering firm), $10,000 for education and encouragement programs, and $5,000 for law enforcement programs (including crossing guard training and equipment). The project would involve Northfield Public Schools’ three elementary schools and its Middle School.

Putting out a grant proposal is a lot of work, and much of that work was done by three members of the Northfield Area Task Force on Nonmotorized Transportation - Neil Lutsky, Randy Perkins, and myself - and by a community volunteer, Christopher Tassava. Christopher is a grant writer for Carleton College, and the college generously allowed him to donate work time toward this cause. Tom Stringer, Business Director of the Northfield Public Schools, and Superintendent Chris Richardson offered great leadership and assistance within the school district. Joel Walinski, the Public Services Director for the City of Northfield; Katy Gehler-Hess, the City Engineer; Al Roder, City Administrator; and Dan Pitts, an Engineering Tech, all played a role in making things happen at the city. Thad Monroe of the Northfield Police Department gave us valuable input. Jean Meyer, our contact at MnDOT, also helped out.

A host of individuals and organizations also submitted letters for our proposal. They include:

• The principals at Northfield’s three elementary schools and its Middle School
• The Rice County Engineer
• The MnDOT District Engineer
• The Rice County Board of Commissioners
• City of Dundas
• Bridgewater Township
• Northfield Police Department
• The Northfield Healthy Community Initiative
• Benjamin Bus Company

I want to express my great thanks to all of the people who were involved in this project. I also want to say that even if we do not get the grant, creating the proposal was still beneficial in terms of learning about the local issues involved in having students walk and bike to school. It may even be possible to create a Safe Routes program without the grant support.

Finally, the Northfield News recently published an article on our grant proposal. It contains some good info on the public health issues that are related to our project:

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services surveys (1976-1980 and 2003-2004) show the number of overweight youth has more than doubled. For children 2 to 5, the prevalence increased from 5 percent to 13.9 percent; for those 6 to 11, the prevalence increased from 6.5 percent to 18.8 percent; and for those 12 to 19, the numbers increased from 5 percent to 17.4 percent.

Minnesota’s figures aren’t much better. A United Health Foundation report released last week shows that the prevalence of obesity in the state increased from 10.2 percent of the population to 24.7 percent.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, overweight children and adolescents are at risk for health problems - during their youth and as adults. Overweight children and adolescents are more likely to have risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease (such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and Type 2 diabetes) than are other children and adolescents, according to the CDC.

Information on the CDC Web site said 80 percent of 10- to 15-year-olds who were overweight were obese at age 25. Another study, the CDC said, found that 25 percent of obese adults were overweight as children.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Biking/Walking, Health, Minnesota, Northfield.