Community Design – Park Access (CDC)
This indicator reports the percentage of population living within 1/2 mile of a park. This indicator is relevant because access to outdoor recreation encourages physical activity and other healthy behaviors.
Source
Source Description
The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (Tracking Network) brings together health data and environment data from national, state, and city sources and provides supporting information to make the data easier to understand. The Tracking Network has data and information on environments and hazards, health effects, and population health.
On the Tracking Network, you can:
Use the Data Explorer to view interactive maps, tables, and charts
View Info by Location for county level data snapshots
Visit state & local tracking websites
CDC’s National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program created and maintains the Tracking Network. Learn more about Tracking.
Methodology
This indicator reports the percentage of population in the report area that live within 0.5 Miles of a park. Data are provided by the CDC National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network. Park boundaries used in this analysis are obtained from NAVTEQ (2010), Esri StreetMap Premium HERE (2016), and the PAD-US (2015), providers of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data.
The number of people within a buffer of ½ mile radius of a park was determined by the CDC at the census tract level. These estimates are aggregated to county, state, and national levels. Percentages of people living within ½ mile of the park boundary are calculated for the census tract, county, state, and national levels. The percentage uses the estimated numbers of people as determined via the buffer analysis and then divides this numerator by the total number of people in each geographic unit. For more information visit the EPH Tracking Data Explorer .