Initiatives
Member Highlights (September- December 2011)
The H&BE Committee coordinated and collaborated with community partners to help win $14,700,000 from the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC’s) Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) grant program for implementing various obesity-prevention transformations to the local built environment. Through this important initiative, a number of coordinated efforts took place to transform our community.
CPPW Initiatives
- The Miami-Dade County Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces Department established a healthy vending machine / concession policy for County parks. It also completed its Urban Design Manual I (for private development) which includes “Great Streets Planning Principles” and “Complete Streets” design elements. Finally, it completed the Park Access and Equity analysis and report, which will inform its newly-refined strategy to optimize accessibility of open/park/recreational spaces for the community.
- The City of Miami installed 157 bicycle-parking racks, over 25 way-finding signs, 51 share-the-road signs, and painted 111 “sharrows,” with more to come. A “sharrow”—blending “share” and “arrow” is a street marking placed in the center of a travel lane that indicates that a cyclist may use the entire lane.
- The City of North Miami passed a Bicycle Parking Ordinance, installed 56 bicycle-parking racks at private business and residential locations (20), public spaces (33) and transit facilities (24), as well as 20 bicycle-parking signs, 150 “sharrows” and 25 bicycle related roadway signs.
- The University of Miami Department of Epidemiology & Public Health submitted for academic journal publication the first finding from its “Cuban Health Study.” The longitudinal study, which is finalizing its third-year data collection, examines the relationships of the built environment to the health outcomes of newly-arrived Cuban immigrants.
Other H&BE Initiatives
- Alliance for Aging, Inc. developed and is beginning to implement its Safe Steps / Pasos Seguros initiative, an elder pedestrian safety awareness and education campaign, funded by the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT). The aim is to curb injuries and fatalities for older adults in Miami-Dade County.
- The Miami-Dade County Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces Departments finalizing its Urban Design Manual II (for civic development).
- The University of Miami Department of Epidemiology & Public Health was awarded $500,000 from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to examine built environment impacts on Miami-Dade County Medicare and Medicaid recipients and is beginning to undertake the research endeavor.
- The Miami Downtown Development Authority is launching a “Downtown Mobility” initiative to provide ongoing monitoring of mobility improvements and trends.
- The Miami-Dade County Metropolitan Planning Organization received an Award of Merit for “Best Plan” from the American Planning Association Gold Coast Section for its Downtown Miami Bicycle-Pedestrian Mobility Plan, produced in collaboration with the Miami Downtown Development Authority.
- The Opa-locka Community Development Corp. (OLCDC) was awarded a mini-grant from Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters. Between January and March 2012, with the support of UF/IFAS Miami-Dade County Extension’s Expanded Food & Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), several Shopping Matters grocery store tours will be organized for low-income residents of Opa-locka.
- The Food Trust (also a member of the Consortium’s Access to Healthy Food Workgroup) is working with Miami-Dade County Health Department and other partners to determine which communities in Miami-Dade County lack adequate access to healthy food and are most affected by diet-related deaths. The Food Trust is mapping food access, income, and diet-related health problems in the County. It is finalizing its Food Access Report and Recommendations for the Miami-Dade County Health Department, following which the Trust will distribute the report to Consortium members. The report documents the need for supermarkets in key areas of Miami-Dade County, establishes the link between supermarket access and public health, and provides recommendations for public policy action.