News

America Walks is Making Giant Footprints in Walking Advocacy

October 21, 2012

Last week, America Walks Executive Director, Scott Bricker, was the keynote speaker at the Southern Oregon Active Transportation Summit in Medford Oregon. Scott spoke on the Power of Walking, and how walking can leverage a broad and powerful collaborative of organizations, businesses, and individuals to increase walking and make communities more walkable.

America Walks at Pro Walk/Pro Bike: Pro Place America Walks participated in presentations, workshops, and walks at Pro Walk conference in Long Beach, CA September 10-13, 2012:

• Building Walkability Coalitions at the National, Regional, and Neighborhood Levels – America Walks provided an overview of trends and principles behind building walking coalitions.
• Steps to a Walkable Community: Guide and Action Network – America Walks co-presented with Sam Schwartz Engineering to provide an overview of our Steps guide and our new outreach tools including community workshops, webinars, and support phone calls.
• Using Data and Survey Information to Guide Safe Routes to School Programs and Advocacy Strategies – America Walks presented our National Walking Survey results.
• Walk With a Doc – During the conference, Kaiser Permanente and America Walks worked together to promote a program called Walk With a Doc.  The Walk With a Doc program is set up to provide a physician to join a walking program.

Long Beach Walking-in-Action Workshop On 9/13/12 America Walks conducted our first Walking-in-Action Workshop in Long Beach, CA at the conclusion of the Pro Walk conference. Over 50 people attended this workshop pilot, including a diverse group of local advocates and strong set of national experts who were able to attend due to us pairing this with the conference. At the Workshop, the community came together around specific key strategies to advance walking in Long Beach. The newly-formed Walk Long Beach committee is in the process of digesting the workshop outcomes and organizing a coherent process for next steps to advance walking in Long Beach.