This award recognizes a community’s commitment to improving access to trails and promoting their use and importance for increasing physical activity.
The Arizona Alliance for Livable Communities (AALC) is the organization that has been reviewing and making recommendations to statewide counties and communities that are updating their General Plans. AALC has a General Plans Update Committee that consists of 10-12 members who are urban planners, landscape architects, and County Public Health Services management professionals.
The AALC General Plans Update Committee works with each community and the AALC members all volunteer their time to provide peer review of all the Recreational Trails and Parks plan elements of General Plans, and they make recommendations for ways to increase recreational trail use and promote healthy outdoor recreation for their County or Municipal General Plan Updates (usually every 3-5 years).
AALC and this program are managed by Pinnacle Prevention, a nonprofit organization with funding provided through a large healthcare/hospital foundation based in Phoenix, AZ, Vitalyst Healthcare Foundation. (The CEO of Vitalyst Healthcare Foundation, Suzanne Pfister, was instrumental in the legislative support and financial development of the Arizona National Scenic Trail, and the Vitalyst Community Outreach Director is the current president of Arizona Forward, the nonprofit organization comprised of 200-300 statewide businesses and corporations that conducts an annual black-tie formal awards program for outstanding community development and conservation projects.)
Pinnacle Prevention is funded in part for the organization's public outreach to smaller, rural, and underserved communities, and the health clinics receive literature and local and county area trail maps provided by the Maricopa Trail Park Foundation the clinics distribute in their daily work with people coming to the health clinics. The literature also includes illustrated Leave-No-Trace educational information. Pinnacle Prevention works with the many County Departments of Public Health in Arizona, and their health clinics serve many hundreds of people and families daily.
AALC's General Plan Update Committee members make recommendations for increasing and linking outdoor trails and parks that encourage healthy outdoor trail uses and recommend community planning for trails and trail users, providing opportunities for healthy outdoor exercise through responsible community planning.
2019: Trails for Health Award: City of Baton Rouge
2017: Quad City Health Initiative, Be Healthy QC Coalition, and Bi-State Regional Commission
2015: Get Your Tail on the Trail
2010: Step Into Cuba Alliance
2008: Pottstown Health and Wellness Foundation
2006: Arkansas River Trail Medical Mile Project
2006: Memorial Hospital Foundation - River Bluff Trail, Logansport, Indiana
2004: Jane Lambert
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