Neighborhood Connect: Seeking to Make Neighborhoods Better for Walking, Biking and Rolling

The Prevention Research Center at UMass Chan is thrilled to announce the launch of our new project, Neighborhood Connect. Our emphasis is to build community capacity so that residents and neighborhood organizations can work to make their neighborhoods better for walking, biking, and rolling to everyday destinations like schools, stores and parks. These kinds of changes can have other benefits, such as improving traffic safety, air quality, and social connectedness, decreasing crime, and making it easier for all to be physically active as part of daily life.

The project will be conducted in collaboration with the City of Worcester Division of Public Health, the Coalition for a Healthy Greater Worcester, a local healthy community organization with has deep ties within Worcester’s neighborhoods, and Walk Massachusetts, a statewide advocacy group. Each partner will play an important role in developing and implementing the project.

• The Worcester Division of Public Health (WDPH) will lead overall intervention delivery and strengthen their engagement with fellow agencies, all with strong support from the PRC.
• The Coalition for Healthy Greater Worcester (Coalition) will recruit and support Neighborhood Leads through their established model. The Leads will recruit and support Neighborhood Teams throughout the intervention.
• WalkMassachusetts (WalkMass) will deliver the walk audit training to Neighborhood Teams.

Neighborhood Connect is an applied public health research project that is developed and implemented by the Prevention Research Center at UMass Chan Medical School under the leadership of Stephenie C. Lemon, PhD and Karin Valentine Goins, MPH. It is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from September 2024- September 2029 as part of the national network of PRCs.