February 2018 – Physical Activity Research Center

Anna Kim Wins 2018 Dale Prize

Congrats to PARC’s Anna Kim on her recent award! Dr. Kim is co-PI on our Georgia Tech project which assesses how training youth to be advocates for changes in the built environment can foster health and produce positive policy and environmental change.

The below announcement is reprinted from the Georgia Tech School of City and Regional Planning website.

Atlanta, GA
Georgia Tech School of City and Regional Planning Assistant Professor Anna Kim was announced the Scholar Prize winner for the 2018 William R. and June Dale Prize for Excellence in Urban and Regional Planning. This year’s award theme was on planning with immigrants in communities and regions.

Kim’s research examines the blurred boundaries between informal and formal jobs for low wage immigrant workers, and how these semi-formal employment arrangements translate into strategies for local economic growth in ethnic neighborhoods. Her studio course projects include work in the greater Atlanta area and supports efforts to understand immigrant communities.

“I am honored to receive the Dale Prize in Planning Excellence. To have received the prize in recognition of my research and on-the-ground practice of ’planning with immigrant communities and regions’ is wonderful, and it’s exciting to see broader recognition of this in our field. Recently, my studio graduate students were also awarded by the Georgia Planning Association for our work with refugees in Clarkston, and I’m proud to see how passionate planners are about planning with and for diverse communities and making sure that all voices are heard,” said Kim.

The Dale Prize is awarded by California State Polytechnic University, Pomona’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning and invites recipients to meet with students and to speak at a two-day colloquium held on campus.

Value of the National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research

-Jim Sallis, Co-Director of PARC

The National Collaborative on Childhood Obesity Research (NCCOR) has been a leading force in the field since 2009. A successful example of public-private partnership among the main federal and foundation funders of health research, NCCOR has coordinated funding of studies, development of resources, capacity building, and dissemination of results. As presented in new papers in American Journal of Preventive Medicine, NCCOR has many accomplishments that have advanced research and provided assistance to practitioners.

I have had the pleasure of serving on the National Expert Scientific Panel since the beginning of NCCOR, so I am not a disinterested observer. However, I have been impressed by the level of collaboration among the funders, their openness to input, and the creativity of their projects. I was pleased to provide a commentary on the impact of NCCOR over the first eight years. It is likely that many people actively involved in childhood obesity work are not aware of the full range of NCCOR’s projects and resources. I commend this special section to everyone looking for solutions to the childhood obesity epidemic. Many of the resources will also be relevant to anyone working on physical activity and healthy eating in any population.