Resources
Find resources to help assess, plan, and implement activities, policies, and environmental change within communities that support physical activity.
Indiana Resources
Bicycle Indiana
This web site promotes, educates, and advocates for bicycling in Indiana. A clearinghouse of bicycling information, events, and resources are available.
Central Indiana Bicycling Association
CIBA is a non-profit organization devoted to encouraging the use of the bicycle as a means for touring, exercising and commuting.
Greenways Foundation
The Greenways Foundation is a charitable trust working to promote the growth, enhancement and use of Indiana greenways.
Health by Design
This coalition exists to create an environment that promotes physical activity and protects the environment through education, advocacy and action.
Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR)
DNR’s mission is to protect, enhance, preserve, and wisely use natural, cultural, and recreational resources for the benefit of Indiana's citizens through professional leadership, management, and education.
Indiana Department of Transportation (INDOT)
INDOT will plan, build, maintain, and operate a superior transportation system enhancing safety, mobility and economic growth. The website provide information on road construction projects, details on doing business, publications, maps, new project studies, and other resources.
Indiana Park & Recreation Association
This non-profit organization is comprised of park and recreation professionals, individuals and groups dedicated to the promotion of quality leisure time, adding value to the quality of life and the preservation of our environment through research, education and service to an ever expanding variety of users. IPRA is an affiliate of the National Recreation and Park Association.
Active Living and Complete Streets
Active Living by Design
Creates community-led change by working with local and national partners to build a culture of active living and healthy eating. Established by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, ALBD is part of the North Carolina Institute for Public Health at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Active Living Network
Provides tools and resources for promoting active living and healthy community design.
Active Living Research
A national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, contributes to the prevention of childhood obesity in low-income and high-risk racial/ethnic communities by supporting research to examine how environments and policies influence active living for children and their families.
Promising Strategies for Creating Healthy Eating and Active Living Environments
Provides policy, strategy, and program recommendations to create healthy eating and active living environments.
National Complete Streets Coalition
This coalition seeks to fundamentally transform the look, feel, and function of the roads and streets in our community, by changing the way most roads are planned, designed, and constructed. Complete street policies direct transportation planners and engineers to consistently design with all users in mind, in line with the elements of Complete Streets policies.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity (DNPAO)
DNPAO takes a public health approach to address the role of nutrition and physical activity in improving the public's health and preventing and controlling chronic diseases. The DNPAO provides information on data and surveillance, training and education, intervention development, health promotion and leadership, policy and environmental change, communication and social marketing, and partnership development.
American Public Transportation Association (APTA)
The APTA works to strengthen and improve public transportation through advocacy, innovation and information sharing. APTA and its members and staff work to ensure that public transportation is available and accessible for all Americans in communities across the country.
National Park Service (NPS)
The NPS is a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Interior. The NPS manages 391 units of the National Park System. The NPS also helps administer dozens of affiliated sites, the National Register of Historic Places, National Heritage Areas, National Wild and Scenic Rivers, National
Historic Landmarks, and National Trails.
Rails to Trails Conservancy
This is a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C., whose mission it is to create a nationwide network of trails from former rail lines and connecting corridors to build healthier places for healthier people.
The National Society of Physical Activity Practitioners in Public Health (NSPAPPH)
The NSPAPPH is a professional organization dedicated to growing the capacity of physical activity practitioners in public health.
Transportation for America
Transportation for America has formed a broad coalition of housing, business, environmental, public health, transportation, equitable development, and other organizations. This coalition seeks to align our national, state, and local transportation policies with an array of issues like economic opportunity, climate change, energy security, health, housing and community development.
U.S. Department of Transportation: Federal Highway Administration (FHWA)
This is a major agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). FHWA is charged with ensuring that America’s roads and highways continue to be the safest and most technologically up-to-date. Although State, local, and tribal governments own most of the Nation’s highways, this agency provides financial and technical support to them for constructing, improving, and preserving America’s highway system.
Transportation and Health 101 Toolkit
This toolkit will help health advocates better understand transportation issues and their related health connections, and help inform transportation advocates on the importance of health in their work.
Safe Routes to School (National Center)
This national program enables community leaders, schools and parents across the U.S. to improve safety and encourage more children to safely walk and bicycle to school. Programs help to reduce traffic congestion and improve health and the environment, making communities more livable for everyone. A policy tip sheet is available to determine how to approach and overturn barrier policies prohibiting walking and/or bicycling to school and how to plan and implement new policies.
Safe Routes to School (Indiana Program)
The Indiana Safe Routes to School (SRTS) Program is based on the federal program designed to make walking and bicycling to school safe and routine.
Strategies for Enhancing the Built Environment to Support Healthy Eating and Active Living
Provides target policies and opportunities towards building healthy environments.
Transportation RX
This report provides on how healthy, equitable transportation policies can improve the quality of life for everyone, and in particular for vulnerable communities.
Smart Growth and Healthy Community Design
Action Strategies for Healthy Communities
This toolkit provides policy options and resources that represent current best approaches that have been identified and evaluated to create healthy communities and prevent childhood obesity.
Recommended Community Strategies and Measurement to Prevent Obesity in the United States
This report contains 24 recommended obesity prevention strategies focusing on environmental and policy level change initiatives that can be implemented by local governments, school districts, child care facilities and others to promote healthy eating and active living. A detailed Implementation and Measurement Guide was developed too. The guide includes measurement data protocols, a listing of useful resources, and examples of communities that successfully implemented each obesity prevention strategy.
American Planning Association: Policy Guides
Provides policy guides on food planning, smart growth and other topics that represent the members of APA as well as provide guidance on issues that affect its members.
Beyond Health Care: New Directions to a Healthier America
Provides recommendations to help ensure all Americans have an opportunity to lead healthier lives.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Community Guide
Provides recommendations on interventions and their use to improve health and prevent disease within communities. Recommendations are available on obesity, nutrition, physical activity and other topics.
PolicyLink Center for Health Equity and Place
The Center provides advocates with the tools necessary to push for real change -- by providing technical assistance, strategies for shaping policy, communications training, and other resources. Information, tools, and resources include a focus on improving the built environment.
Congress for New Urbanism (CNU)
The CNU is the leading organization promoting walkable, neighborhood-based development as an alternative to sprawl. CNU takes a proactive, multi-disciplinary approach to restoring our communities.
Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC)
The LISC is dedicated to helping community residents transform distressed neighborhoods into healthy and sustainable communities of choice and opportunity — good places to work, do business and raise children.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Designing and Building Healthy Places
This program scientifically considers all factors that affect the health of the nation, specifically looking at the interaction between people and their environments, natural as well as human-made and how this continues to emerge as a major issue concerning public health.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Healthy Communities Program
CDC’s Healthy Communities Program is engaging communities and mobilizing national networks to focus on chronic disease prevention. This program provides information and training on health-related policy, systems, and environmental change strategies.
Prevention Institute
Looks at approaches to create systematic, comprehensive strategies that change the conditions impacting community health.
Smart Growth America
Smart Growth America is a coalition of national, state and local organizations working to improve the ways towns, cities and metro areas are planned and built.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency: Smart Growth
The EPA smart growth program helps communities improve their development practices and get the type of development they want. They work with local, state, and national experts to discover and encourage successful, environmentally sensitive development strategies.
Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments: Environmental Nutrition and Activity Community Tool (ENACT)
The Strategic Alliance developed ENACT to offer community members realistic ways to create positive change in their food and activity environments. Strategies are provided to improve nutrition and activity environments in several settings on the local level.
Walkable Communities and Bicycling
Walk Friendly Communities (WFC) is a national recognition program developed to encourage towns and cities across the U.S. to establish or recommit to a high priority for supporting safer walking environments. The WFC program will recognize communities that are working to improve a wide range of conditions related to walking, including safety, mobility, access, and comfort.
The National Center for Bicycling & Walking
The is the major program of the Bicycle Federation of America, Inc. (BFA), a national, nonprofit corporation established in 1977. Their mission is to create bicycle-friendly and walkable communities. The program focuses on changing the way communities are planned, designed and managed to ensure that people of all ages and abilities can walk and bike easily, safely and regularly.
Bicycling Information Center and Pedestrian Information Center
The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) is a national clearinghouse for information about health and safety, engineering, advocacy, education, enforcement, access, and mobility for pedestrians (including transit users) and bicyclists.
Community Bikeability Checklist
The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) created this checklist to help people determine how bikeable their communities are.
Community Walkability Checklist
The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) created this checklist to help people determine how walkable their communities are.
Community Health Assessment
Healthy Development Measurement Tool
The Healthy Development Measurement Tool is a comprehensive evaluation metric to consider health needs in urban development plans and projects.
World Health Organization (WHO) Health Impact Assessment
WHO provides information and resources on health impact assessments (HIA), including guidance on evaluating an HIA, why it works, examples, and other toolkits.