New research shows that adding green space in LA’s “park poor” neighborhoods could lead to a population-level gain of some 165,000 years in life expectancy
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Prevention Institute, in collaboration with the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health's Department of Environment Health Sciences and the Powering Healthy Lives through Parks Community Advisory Board, has published new research about the relationship between parks and life expectancy and an advocacy toolkit that community-based organizations can use to push for park equity.
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Targeted investments in park infrastructure would significantly benefit the health of LA County Latino and Black residents.
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Urban parks and green spaces support public health by providing opportunities for physical activity, time in nature, social connection, and respite. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they have played a crucial role in reducing stress and helping fend off depression. Parks also filter air, remove pollution, cool temperatures, and filter stormwater. But access to parks and green space is very unequal across lines of race and class. For generations, park inequities have unfairly and unjustly affected low-income communities of color. In LA County, more than 50% of residents live in neighborhoods that rank as “high park need” or “very high park need.”
To understand the health impacts of increasing park acreage in areas of LA County that face park deficits and low levels of tree canopy, Prevention Institute partnered with UCLA’s Department of Environment Health Sciences to study census tract-level data made available recently through the United States Small-Area Life Expectancy Project (USALEEP).
Key findings:
- Increasing park acreage in areas of LA County that face park deficits and low levels of tree canopy has the potential to considerably increase life expectancy in those areas.
- If all the census tracts in LA County with park deficits and low tree canopy levels had an increase in park acreage up to the county’s median level, those census tracts could see a gain of approximately 164,700 years in life expectancy across the population.
- Targeted investments in park infrastructure would significantly benefit the health of Latino and Black residents. Calculating gains specifically for these two groups, targeted investments would result in an increase of almost 118,000 years of life expectancy.
This work was supported by the Urban Institute through funds provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It was guided by an advisory board that includes the Center for Health Equity at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and seven local base-building organizations: Community Coalition, Esperanza Community Housing Corporation, Long Beach Forward, National Health Foundation, Social Justice Learning Institute, Pacoima Beautiful, and Promesa Boyle Heights.
Click here to read the Park Equity, Life Expectancy, and Power Building Research Summary, Policy Brief, and community profiles about South LA, Boyle Heights and East LA, and Northeast San Fernando Valley.
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Check out the Advocacy Toolkit for Park Equity, Life Expectancy, and Power Building
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To achieve park equity, people living in communities that have been historically excluded from park-related decision-making must be heard. The materials in PI’s Advocacy Toolkit for Park Equity, Life Expectancy, and Power Building are designed to support community-based organizations, their members, and others who are building power to secure equitable investments in park infrastructure in disinvested communities. Although they focus on LA County, they are applicable in other US cities with similar park inequities.
Toolkit materials include:
- A 4-page overview that summarizes key findings from the research synopsis and policy brief.
- A policy brief that reviews evidence of park inequities in the Los Angeles region, lays out a framework for achieving park equity, and sets forth policy recommendations.
- A research synopsis that describes the findings from new research linking availability of parks and life expectancy at the census tract-level in Los Angeles County.
- Three community profiles that highlight the work of park equity advocates in Boyle Heights and unincorporated East Los Angeles; Panorama City, Pacoima, and Sun Valley; and South Los Angeles and summarize local park equity and life expectancy data.
- Spanish translations of the 4-page overview and the community profiles.
LA County voters have enacted two countywide parcel tax measures (Measure A, the Safe, Clean Neighborhood Parks and Beaches Measure of 2016, and Measure W, the Safe, Clean Water Act of 2018) and a statewide bond (Proposition 68, the California Drought, Water, Parks, Climate, Coastal Protection, and Outdoor Access for All Act of 2018) that will generate hundreds of millions of dollars for parks, open space, and stormwater-related green infrastructure. These measures, now in their implementation phases, hold the potential to build or revitalize parks and green space in the LA region’s highest need communities. Strategically spent, the revenue from these measures could set us on a path to eliminate the region’s deplorable park inequities while reducing associated health inequities and gaps in life expectancy.
But achieving park equity will require more than investments. It will require transforming policies and practices to prioritize investments in communities experiencing the greatest park deficits, engage in meaningful community engagement, collect and make publicly available data on park inequities, fund technical assistance and capacity-building funds to support community-based organizations to be active players in parks and land-use decision-making, and ensure transparency and community oversight of park investments.
*Photo credit: Office of LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis
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