Getting families and kids healthy, on TRACK

Getting kids to play outdoors shouldn't be a hard challenge, but experts say it is becoming increasingly difficult to engage children in the natural world.

Carolyn Ward, CEO of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, cites a Kaiser Family Foundation study in revealing how little time kids spend outdoors.

"Kids ages 4 to 14 are plugged in for 7.65 hours a day," Ward said. "If you take away school, eating and sleeping, 7.65 hours a day represents all your free time. Many kids are outside in unstructured play for only 4-7 minutes a day.

"When you ask kids where their preferred place to play is, they'll say inside because that's where the electrical outlets are," she said. "It is no wonder one in three kids is overweight or obese."

Ward is passionate about changing those statistics. Under her leadership, the Parkway Foundation created Kids in Parks, which administers a network of family-friendly TRACK Trails. The trails feature colorful adventure brochures featuring two trail guides — a dog named Track and a dragonfly named Kip — who lead families on self-guided explorations.

Once they complete a trek, participants are encouraged to track their adventure through online registration at kidsinparks.com. Kids earn points they can use to claim prizes useful for future hikes.

The first TRACK trail, located at the Blue Ridge Parkway's Visitor Center in Asheville, came online in August 2009. The newest trail opens at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock. Named "Farm, Field and Forest," this walk is presented from the point of view of Carl Sandburg's grandchildren.

Taking the first steps

Noted Asheville pediatrician Olson Huff sparked the initiative in 2008 when he expressed frustration to Kathy Higgins, president of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, about many of his patients being overweight and living sedentary lifestyles.

"Dr. Huff said he'd like to see us put something together to get kids connected with area parks and get them active outdoors," says Jennifer MacDougall, senior program officer for Healthy Active Communities at the Blue Cross Blue Shield foundation.

"Our goal in the beginning was to create something replicable and track outcomes. We did not want it to be expensive," MacDougall said. "The trails can be in your backyard, schoolyard, county parks or national parks."

Ward started the program in 2009. The insurance company foundation provided a seed grant to help find ways to link child health with the health of parks, she said.

From her previous work as a professor at Humboldt State University in California, Ward knew a lot of theory about how to get people to change behavior.

"People want self-guided brochures and they like incentives" she said.

Prizes include such items as nature journals, stickers, patches, magnifying glasses and bandanas. Research shows that 13 percent of participants had never been hiking before striking out on a TRACK trail. It also reveals 19 percent of people find out about the trails through word of mouth.

"That's super exciting to me," she said. "When a kid takes a prize to school and starts telling friends about it, that's when it changes the conversation and can really make an impact."

Continual expansion

The TRACK trail program has expanded far past its origins on the Blue Ridge Parkway. There are now trails in seven states (North and South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, South Dakota and California) plus the District of Columbia.

There are 100 trails in the program. Fifty-one of those trails are located in North Carolina. The Kids in Park website allows people to search through trails and to find out where they are all located.

"We're hoping in 2015 to have a TRACK trail in every county in North Carolina," Ward said. "I personally would like to have a track trail in every state. It's been overwhelming. We have a waiting list of trails in other states and other countries have also contacted us — New Zealand and South Africa. We're holding off on that until we can get our model solid here in North America."

"We could take our brochures and stick them on a trail in Florida tomorrow," said Jason Urroz, director of the Kids in Parks program.

"For example, the Everglades National Park wants to start a TRACK trail there. We'll take the brochure template and take our birds and trees out and put their birds and trees in. A lot of city and country parks don't have a graphic designer. Since we have a template, we can easily drop their pictures in and create a brochure that they wouldn't be able to do themselves."

Along with hiking trails, there are also disc golf trails (find those in our area at Enka, North Buncombe and Owen high schools), geocaching, canoe trails, and next month there will be an addition.

"We're really excited to open our first bike trail in Boone on Oct. 11," Ward said.

Finding a comfort zone

"We're now on an entire generation of parents who grew up playing video games. They don't know how to take their kids out in the woods," she said.

Urroz said the Kids in Parks program had to be creative to help parents and their kids feel safe about venturing out of their comfort zones.

The program offers two types of "Anywhere Adventures." Brochures and encouragement to get outdoors can be found at participating pediatrician offices like ABC Pediatrics and Mission Children's Hospital, both in Asheville. It's also possible to plan a first adventure in your own backyard and download a brochure from the website.

"It's a picture-based scavenger hunt to look for a pine cone or a flower or a bug," Urroz said. "As they are looking for a flower, they might see a frog, and that discovery may encourage them to go back out and see what they can find on another day."

The hope is as people become more comfortable exploring the natural world close to home they'll want to start exploring the TRACK trails at parks whether they are local, county or national. The program successfully crosses agency boundaries and links them together.

"That's one of the really neat things," Urroz said. "The trails at the Carl Sandburg Home or Fletcher Park or The White House are all interconnected through this one program. It creates a network for kids and families to go to."

Tracking TRACK Trail usage

The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation wants to figure out who uses the TRACK Trails. That's why they've partnered with the North Carolina Health and Wellness Center at UNC Asheville. Dr. Rebecca Reeves, director of research programs, and David Gardner, executive director, are actively engaged in finding out what the use is like on the trails as well as observing how the use changes.

They first researched three TRACK trails in Western North Carolina in 2011. They've continued this year with new studies on those original trails as well as observations of TRACK trail usage in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg area and New Hanover area in the southeastern corner of N.C.

For the trails in the state's Piedmont and coastal areas, the study utilizes the help of faculty and students at UNC Charlotte and UNC Wilmington.

While data collection and analysis are still underway, Gardner says the preliminary numbers of people observed getting on a trail and hiking has increased significantly as well as the numbers of people who register their adventures online.

"The data we've collected helps the Parkway Foundation plan its next steps and helps in promotion of the benefits of these trails when other agencies and organizations consider installing a TRACK trail in their park," Gardner said.

"The Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation is devoted not only to preserving natural resources, but recognizing parks can be a great avenue for families and children to be inspired by nature and become more physically active," he added. "The combination of those two elements provides some hope that future generations of our citizens will be good stewards of the land and recognize the benefits of physical activity for their health. It's a Healthy People/Healthy World kind of initiative."

Ward said she is concerned that if children aren't encouraged to get outdoors and begin understanding the inherent value in the environment that the natural resources will ultimately be lost.

"When these kids are voting and making decisions for our resources, these parks and public lands won't have value for hiking, but they'll be seen as value for building houses or cutting timber and we're going to lose them. That's very scary to me," she says.

IF YOU GO

What: TRACK Trail grand opening. Ribbon cutting followed by a guided hike.

Where: Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, Flat Rock.

When: 10:30 a.m. Saturday.

Admission: Free.

Learn more: For directions and more, visit http://kidsinparks.com/events/carl-sandburg-home-grand-opening