Aquatic deserts: Atlanta | Presidential Fitness Test

Contested Waters A Social History of Swimming Pools in America

An article from Urbanize Atlanta, "Rejection of Va-Hi swimming pool will set Atlanta kids back," was in my newsfeed, about the identification of aquatic deserts in Atlanta. 

This has been fostered by racism in terms of both differentiated provision of civic assets, but also in how with integration, many facilities were closed instead of reversing the segregation that had existed previously ("When Cities Closed Pools to Avoid Integration," JSTOR, "Anacostia Park Pool Riots," National Park Service, Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America, "The forgotten history of segregated swimming pools and amusement parks," The Conversation).

Of course, lack of access has led to a low rate of swimming ability among African-Americans--fewer than 40%-- in a city that's majority black.

The author's solution is for the parks and school departments to join together and create swim teams.

Anacostia Park swimming pool - Washington DC Photo by: Evening Star, June 11, 1939, p. C-5

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My response:

While well argued, the article on aquatic deserts equates swim teams to learning how to swim, leisurely using a pool, and more comprehensive recreation planning. They are not the same. 

Swim teams are teams with a limited number of participants versus the much bigger number of 60+% of African Americans who don't know how to swim. I don't see how that's going to have much affect on the number of Atlanteans who know how to swim.

Yes the schools and parks should work together, probably swim teams are a good idea, but only as a single element of what should be a broader swimming recreation plan for Atlanta aiming to address the aquatic deserts identified by the author, and to extend the range of public facilities and programs available to Atlanta citizens.

Indoor water park, Anne Arundel County, Maryland.

In my community, I am just a leisurely user of a semi public pool (the public ones are harder to get to from where I live). 

I'm a parks guy not a recreation planner so I am unfamiliar with best practice examples of swimming facilities and programs for swimming. 

In Salt Lake County, most but not all recreation facilities are county run although some cities remain independent with their own facilities. 

A majority of swimming based recreational facilities, both indoor and outdoor, are set up not just with traditional pools for swimming and racing, complemented by lazy rivers, hot tubs, water slides, sometimes wave pools/currents, and shallower open plunge facilities, rather than just pools they are referred to as aquatic centers. 

This allows children to be introduced to swimming without the pressure of joining a team as well as being able to try wide range of activities, to learning how to swim, to having access to teams serving all ages, including masters adult programs. 

And yes, some have swim teams, but all have lessons and in Salt Lake County youth are entitled to a free pass until they are 19. 

Many jurisdictions have similar free pass programs for youth, and discounts for seniors. 

Cities like Philadelphia and DC do have indoor and outdoor pools (mostly just a pool rather than an aquatic center) but have problems staffing and in my opinion start closing too early, in August, when hot temperatures typically are present through September. 

Having a plan addressing these issues, including seasonality and staffing will likely have more impact addressing aquatic deserts than developing a swim team program alone. A quick perusal of the Internet finds these resources. 

-- "Designing Modern Aquatics Centers," Parks & Recreation Magazine  

-- Salt Lake County Health Regulation #2: Design, Construction and Operation of Pools

-- "The Do’s and Don’ts of Planning Aquatic Centers," LPA   

-- "Making a Splash: Key Principles for Effective Aquatic Center Planning," Sports Facilities Companies 

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Trump and the revival of the Presidential Fitness Test.  Given how sedentary and obese our population is becoming ("Just 28% Of Americans Are Exercising Enough, CDC Says—And It’s Even Lower In Some Regions," Forbes), reviving standards for fitness and wellness are in order.  From the journal article (Proceedings of the Mayo Clinic)  "Healthy Lifestyle Characteristics and Their Joint Association With Cardiovascular Disease Biomarkers in US Adults": 

{O]nly 2.7% of American adults in the study were found to exhibit four fundamental healthy lifestyle characteristics. These four were: 

• Being sufficiently active 
• Eating a healthy diet 
• Being a non-smoker 
• Having a recommended body fat percentage

The Post's Kevin Blackistone wrote a response to President Trump's announcement of bringing back the fitness test ("The presidential fitness test is nostalgia in the worst way") and how while there is a great need to improve the fitness and wellness of youth (and adults), Trump's focus is in all the wrong places on teams and competition, not fitness.  This is the point I made above about the difference between a swim team and knowing how to swim.

Trump’s approach to youth fitness is on-brand nostalgia, in the worst way. Like his administration’s thwarting wind energy construction and electric vehicle manufacturing in lieu of boosting coal mining and building more combustion engine cars. It isn’t helpful. It’s hurtful. And it’s narrow-minded by focusing on competition — Trump placed “sports” before “fitness” in the program’s title — to ensure what the president fanaticized as “America’s global dominance in sports.”

He contrasted this approach to that of  Spelman College, where the then president realized that focusing on intercollegiate athletics meant that most of the student body was not served at all.

Retired Spelman College president Beverly Tatum took an opposite approach when she led the all-women’s HBCU in Atlanta for 13 years starting in 2002. In her soon-to-be-released book “Peril and Promise: College Leadership in Turbulent Times,” Tatum recalled reading an article about the sedentary lives of young Black women and how it contributed to diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, breast cancer and other health vagaries that plague Black women. So, she took the unpopular tact of shutting down the small school’s intercollegiate athletic program in favor of a wellness initiative for the entire student body.

“The overall approach to wellness that we were implementing at Spelman was certainly very much in line with the activities of the Obama White House,” Tatum, a psychologist by profession who wrote the noted book, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Other Conversations About Race,” told me Wednesday. “And I say the Obama White House because Michelle Obama was one of the great champions of eating better and moving more. And our slogan was, ‘Eat better. Move more. Sleep well.’ 

 “If you’ve got those three things working, particularly for late adolescence — improving your diet, engaging in regular activity, not only for better physical health, but also mental health, and then … sleep,” Tatum said she and the Spelmanites learned, “you are well on your way to a long and healthy life, which is of course what we wanted for our students.”

This is why I use the term health and wellness planning versus hospital planning, as a keyword identifying blog posts.  Because health planning should go beyond providing access to acute and emergency care through hospitals.  But our "health care system" isn't set up to promote health per se, but to deal with health problems.