Prop P: a good investment in urban health

Parks provide people with contact with nature, known to confer certain health benefits and enhance well-being.

The Parks sales tax, Proposition P, if it passes, could raise an estimated $780 million over the next 20 years. Trails, under the direction of the Great Rivers Greenway district, would get another 30 percent. And 40 percent would be divided between St. Louis and St. Louis County parks.

Parks in the city are projected to get $2.5 million a year. Parks in the county would add $10 million a year.

Health studies have shown that contact with nature – with plants, with animals, with pleasing landscapes, and with wilderness – offers a range of medical benefits we desperately need in the African-American community. These include lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, enhanced survival after a heart attack, more rapid recovery from surgery, fewer minor medical complaints, and lower self-reported stress. 

In children with attention disorders and in teens with behavioral disorders, contact with nature has resulted in significant improvement, according to a study by Howard Frumkin, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Washington).  Harvard University professor Edward O. Wilson argues in his book Biophilia that human beings have a genetic tendency to seek connections with other living things.

Thus it is critical that a parks system provide a variety of functions because different groups of people have different health needs. People from different age, ethnic and socioeconomic groups may have different traditions in physical activity and attitudes towards natural settings. For people who are economically disadvantaged, parks are an affordable means to healthy activities.

Ethnic groups also differ in their preferences. Race and ethnicity have been associated with choice of parks and with types of activities engaged in by park users. These differences may relate in part to park amenities; for example, Dwyer and Gobster (1997) found that African Americans were more likely to use facility-based urban recreational parks while whites were more likely to use wildland parks for such activities as camping and hiking.

Prop P will address all these needs.

The impact of Prop P on the local economy is enormous. Every dollar spent changes hands several times before leaving the locality in which it is spent. The majority of this money will be paid to local businesses, service providers and workers. For some minority businesses, the Parks Tax expenditures could impact the very basis for their existence.

Indeed, Prop. P on the April 2 ballot is a good investment.

Adolphus Pruitt is President of the St. Louis City branch of the NAACP.