Caltrans Active Transportation Funding Program 
The Active Transportation Program (ATP) is a combination of State and Federal funding sources, and covers a wide variety of project types, including non-infrastructure (NI) – education, encouragement, and enforcement activities that further the goals of the ATP. Non-infrastructure programs include those benefiting school students, older adults, or entire communities.

Other Funding Sources with Active Transportation Elements 
While the Active Transportation Program has successfully funded projects across the State, the Program is incredibly oversubscribed and cannot meet all of the State's needs. Therefore, the California Transportation Commission (CTC) and Caltrans have developed a list of additional programs that fund active transportation projects and elements to serve as a resource for cities, counties, and agencies looking to fund valuable active transportation projects in their communities.

Recorded Webinar (January 6, 2021): Advancing Resilience using PSE Approaches in Nutrition and Health: Integrated Framework, Application, and Evaluation Strategies featuring Angie Tagtow, Dena Herman and Leslie Cunningham-Sabo .

Recorded Webinar (December 13, 2012): Systems and Environment Change to Improve the Health of MCAH Populations featuring Richard Jackson, MD, MPH, UCLA School of Public Health 

A Healthy Community for the Green Family (YouTube) : This video shows how policies, systems, and the environment (PSE) influence a family’s ability to make healthy choices. It can be used to help explain policy, systems, and environmental change interventions and the importance of including PSE work with direct education.

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Work with cities and counties to ensure that the General Plans include provisions for healthy eating and active living increases support for incorporating health equity initiatives related to food access, the built environment and active living into General Plans. This work ensures that health benefits and threats related to parks, green/open space, trees, food insecurity, and healthy food access are addressed. Some of the ways to promote this work is through use of state level media campaigns, resources, and other messaging strategies through digital and social media such as an opinion editorial, blog posts or a letter to the editor .

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The WIC Program supports the consumption of fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables, and encourages shopping at farmers’ markets. Since May 2010, farmer’s markets in California have been able to apply for authorization to accept the Women Infants and Children (WIC) Fruit and Vegetable Check (FVC). Since 2010, over 450 farmer’s markets have been authorized to accept the WIC benefit. Learn more about participating farms and farmer’s markets. Maternal, Child and Adolescent programs can promote local use Farmers' Markets Research has shown that access to farmers' markets increases fruit and vegetable consumption among participants and that access to neighborhood supermarkets and farmers' markets reduces the risk of overweight and obesity. This is especially effective in low income communities where fresh produce is less accessible and more expensive. Farmers' markets can increase the availability of healthy foods and lower the overall food costs for the neighborhood. Since locally-grown produce is sold by local farmers, the cost of a middleman and transportation can be avoided making the sale prices competitive compared to grocery stores. Ultimately, farmers' markets can alter the community nutrition environment by making fresh fruits and vegetables more available and affordable, ensuring that more people have the opportunity to make healthier nutrition decisions.

Research supports the use of community gardens to improve a population's nutritional status. One study reported that adults with a household member that participated in a community garden consumed fruits and vegetables 1.4 times more per day and were 3.5 times more likely to consume fruits and vegetables five times a day than those who did not participate. Another study reported that community gardeners consumed fruits and vegetables 5.7 times per day compared with 4.6 times per day for home gardeners and 3.9 times per day for non-gardeners, suggesting that community gardens may benefit the health of its participants more so than private home gardens. Community gardens can also increase one's willingness to try the fruits and vegetables grown in a garden, which could prove useful for younger picky eaters. By improving the community nutrition environment with these gardens, participants may increase their consumption of fruits and vegetables and thus improve their health outcomes.

Programs such as Farm-to-School change the food environment in a school setting and help to increase the intake of fruits and vegetables in children. It has been reported that, by changing the organizational nutrition environment through school lunches, children consume an increase of one serving of fruits a vegetables per day. In working with various stakeholders involved with farming, institutions such as schools can improve the nutrition, and therefore the health outcomes children as well as their families.

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Access to free and safe drinking water is essential to the health and well-being of communities. Work that supports creating access to free, safe drinking water (can includes working with partners to include water refilling stations, free water available in food service environments) and increasing the safety, taste, and appeal of water as a beverage choice. This work encourages consumption of water, especially in places of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), and can help increase hydration and decrease risk for dental cavities, obesity and diabetes among community members.

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Initiatives such as Safe Routes to School provide a safe way for children to exercise regularly by walking or biking to school. According to the Environment and Systems Intervention Report, the percentage of children 5-14 years of age walking or biking to school dropped from 48% to just 13% from 1969 to 200927. Environmental factors, such as distance to school, traffic-related danger, and crime danger or perceived safety, are likely to have played a major role in this decrease. Safe Routes to School addresses these issues through infrastructural and non-infrastructural interventions. Infrastructural interventions include grants for better crosswalks and signage, while non-infrastructural interventions may include Walk to School Day or organizing Walking School Buses so that groups of children have adult chaperones when walking to school. A California study referenced in the Environment and Systems Intervention Report showed that schools that implemented infrastructure interventions through Safe Routes to School had walking and bicycling increases in the range of 20 to 200%29. In Marin County’s second year of enacting the Safe Routes to School Program, participating schools reported an increase of 64% in school trips made by walking and 114% by biking. They reported a 39% decrease in trips by private vehicles carrying only one student. Moreover, a safety analysis estimated that the safety benefit of the program was an approximate 49% decrease in childhood bicycle and pedestrian collision rates.

• Safe Routes to School 
• Safe Routes to School Success Stories 

Increasing levels of physical activity in a community does not always require long-term development projects, but can also be achieved by increasing access to existing recreational facilities. Establishing joint-use agreements, such as opening school yards to the community after school hours, is one way to reduce barriers to safe places and provide opportunities for engaging in physical activity. Joint-use agreements can be formal or informal partnerships between two entities – usually a school and a city – to share use of indoor and outdoor spaces such as gymnasiums and athletic fields. For example, a school could share their pool with a swim team or a school employee could unlock the school gate after hours so people in the community have access to the basketball courts. This agreement is ideal for rural or low-income populations that may otherwise lack access to physical activity facilities.

• California Project Lean’s Current Projects and Highlights: Joint Use of School Facilities for Physical Activity  Information on CA Project Lean’s use of “Communities Putting Prevention to Work” grant to work towards adoption and implementation of a state joint use policy to reduce at least one major barrier to community after-hours use of indoor and outdoor school physical activity facilities. A power point presentation and joint use fact sheet can be found on this website. Links to additional joint use resources also available.

Environments that encourage physical activities such as walking and biking are ideal for improving a community's health and preventing chronic illnesses. It is therefore important to ensure that the environment is conducive to this sort of daily physical activity. First, it is important to note that mixed land use, connectivity, safety, and aesthetic qualities all contribute to the "walkability" of a place⁷, as described in the Environment and Systems Intervention Report. "Walkability" refers to how safe, convenient, and usable facilities are for pedestrians and bikers to get to their destinations. Safe and attractive sidewalks that are destination-oriented, especially with required mixed-land use zoning so that people live near where they work, shop, and play, may encourage more members of communities to walk or bike as their primary mode of transportation.

• The Active Transportation Safety Program (ATSP)  assists local communities with creating, evaluating, and sustaining active transportation education and encouragement (non-infrastructure) programs, including Safe Routes to School (SRTS) programs, through targeted trainings, technical assistance, and resources.
• California Walks  is a state-wide voice that partners with state agencies, organizations and communities to establish and strengthen policies and practices that support pedestrian safety and healthy, walkable communities. Links to network affiliates and further resources available on website.
• Pedestrian Safety Training : Power Point presentation sponsored by California Office of Traffic Safety and presented by CDPH describing “It’s All Up to Us” campaign.
• Walkability Checklist (PDF) : A tool to help evaluate your community’s walkability and provides solutions for improvement. Developed in partnership by A Walkable America, Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center, the US Department of Transportation, and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
• Walk Friendly Communities : Applications for designating your community as Walk Friendly. The website also includes an assessment tool for determining how walkable your community is.
• Walking 101: The Role of Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health Programs :
  This webinar highlights the opportunities to promote walking for those working in Maternal, Child, and Adolescent Health.

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Increasing access and physical activity in parks can help launch a culture of active communities and increase awareness and appreciation for parks and nature. Work with local parks can include specific programs like Parks Rx, Parks After Dark, and others, and includes partnership activities with parks departments and other partners to increase access to services, and safe recreation areas.

Resources:

• Health in All Policies Guide
• Factsheet on benefits of Active Transportation to health
• Factsheet/Slide deck with benefits of tree, park, green/open space and health - resource/tool
• Park Prescription Program Toolkit
• Complete parks overview: Creating an equitable parks system. ChangeLabs Solutions (2018).

• All Abilities Playground Example