How parks help to address health equity in Metro Detroit

This story is part of Equity in Our Parks, a series highlighting the people and organizations advancing equity through Southeast Michigan’s parks and related programming. It is supported by Oakland County Parks and Recreation, Wayne County Parks and Recreation, Huron-Clinton Metroparks, City of Detroit, and Detroit Riverfront Conservancy. 

Alongside health clinics, food pantries, and community centers, southeast Michigan's parks are increasingly becoming important hubs for advancing health equity in their communities.

Detroiters, and many in surrounding metro-area communities, face a variety of unique health challenges. According to the Detroit Health Equity Education Resource, Black adults in majority-Black Detroit are much more likely than white adults to experience high blood pressure, diabetes, or obesity. In Wayne County overall, 14% of adults and 22% of children experience food insecurity. And according to the city of Detroit's 2018 community health assessment, Detroiters are 10% more likely than Michiganders in general to have no regular physical activity.

But a variety of programs in the region's parks are working to change that in the communities that need health support most, offering free physical fitness programming, food distributions, accessible new facilities, and more. Barbara Blum-Alexander, director of community health at Henry Ford Health, describes parks as free, approachable places for people to put healthy behaviors into action.

"Parks, especially neighborhood parks that are within short distances of where people live, just improve the quality of life that people have," Blum-Alexander says. "It's sort of like an intergenerational place for people to go and do things that are health-promoting in a safe environment."

From basketball to free produce in parks

One of the most robust health-focused projects in the region's parks is the Detroit Pistons Foundation's Neighbors program. Launched in 2019, the program has grown to offer a wide variety of free, weekly fitness programming at 12 parks across the city of Detroit. Patrick Duggan, the Pistons' community and social responsibility and foundation manager, says the program grew out of the Pistons' efforts to renovate 60 basketball courts throughout city parks. He says the Pistons "didn't want to just build the courts and then just leave the neighborhoods and leave the parks alone."
Steve KossPatrick Duggan at a basketball court in Rouge Park.
"Lots of people are doing a lot of great work downtown," he says. " ... We felt like we can make a great impact throughout every corner of the city."

Duggan says the Pistons Foundation has sought to build close connections with neighborhood groups near each of the parks the program serves, assisted in part by the foundation's partnership with the Detroit Parks Coalition. He says the classes offered through the Neighbors program – which range from Zumba to yoga to skateboarding to basketball – are based on "what the people want."
Steve KossPeople play basketball during a Pistons Neighbors program session in Rouge Park.
"We'll contact the programmer, we'll get it set up, you help us spread the word, and we'll get it done," he says.

Among the most popular elements of the program, according to Duggan, are the weekly free produce distributions offered at select parks by Eastern Market. 

"People can't believe it, that they can walk up and basically do some of their grocery shopping at the park that day," he says.
Steve KossAn Eastern Market produce distribution at Rouge Park.
Nicole Morba, food access manager at the Eastern Market Partnership, says the opportunity to distribute free food is "life-changing" not just for neighborhood residents, but also for her and her staff. As inflation has risen, she says people are less likely to seek out – and spend extra money on – fresh produce.

"Any chance to just give away produce and get more fruits and veggies in people's fridges and bellies is vital," she says.

Sally Petrella, president of the Friends of Rouge Park, has been working with the Pistons to offer Neighbors programming at Rouge Park since 2019. She says Neighbors is "the perfect program" for residents of the Rouge Park area because "good-quality recreation" and "fresh, healthy food" are both big needs for the community.
Steve KossSally Petrella at Rouge Park.
"Rouge Park is surrounded by homes and it's within a community of color, a low-income community," Petrella says. "One-third of Detroiters don't even own a car, but Rouge Park is so accessible, and is right there in an area that has a huge need for programming for all the youth that are in the neighborhood, for all the seniors. So this programming is really helping to meet that need."

Increasing access to free fitness in Norwayne

West of Detroit, Westland and Wayne County staff are coming together with residents to improve health and fitness opportunities in and around Venoy-Dorsey Park in Westland's historic Norwayne neighborhood. The Norwayne subdivision was rapidly constructed in 1942 to house employees of Ypsilanti Township's Willow Run bomber plant, but fell victim to blight, school closings, and general disinvestment. However, over the past 15 years residents have been working to revitalize their neighborhood. 

A key sign of this is Jefferson Barns Community Vitality Center, a city facility opened in 2015 in the former Jefferson Barns Elementary School. The center helps to fill the gap closed by the closure of Westland's Bailey Recreation Center in 2012. It offers free fitness programming ranging from boxing lessons at Kronk Boxing Gym to pickleball.

"Anybody can come," says Joanne Campbell, the city of Westland's director of housing and community development. "Money's not a barrier."

Now, Wayne County is working to build upon Jefferson Barns' successes by improving health, fitness, and exercise options at Venoy-Dorsey Park, just across the road from the community center. Elizabeth Iszler, chief of planning and design at Wayne County Parks, says the county's goal is to "reactivate" the park, which currently has soccer fields and a baseball diamond, but few other amenities. Iszler says the county is planning to add an outdoor gym, historical plaza, playgrounds, picnic areas, new athletic fields, and nature education spaces to the park to "increase outdoor recreation and outdoor space for community center programming." She also hopes to add a walkway to make it easier for people to cross Dorsey Road between the community center and the park.

"We're hoping it brings more people to this area, and then they'll learn that there's things going on at the community center as well," Campbell says. "So we're hoping that it'll just bring more people to the area overall."

Iszler sees the project as a way to level the playing field for a community that needs more easily accessible resources to stay healthy.

"Some parks have had more focus than others," she says. "... It's incredibly important to us and to [Wayne County Parks] director [Alicia Bradford] that we get our parks to be equitable."

"One of the many ways that we try to achieve our mission"

Blum-Alexander says parks play a key role in numerous health-related programs that Henry Ford Health offers and supports. For example, she notes that Henry Ford Health offers nutrition education programs in a variety of local facilities, including parks, but efforts like Eastern Market's produce distributions help boost the impact of that work. 
Steve KossStaff unload a van for an Eastern Market produce distribution at Rouge Park.
"We teach people what they should be eating, how to purchase and store and prep the food," she says. "But ... if they can't do the things that we're teaching them, then we're kind of falling short."

Another example is Henry Ford Health's Farmers Market Food Navigator programming at the Hope Village Farmers Market at Cool Cities Park in Detroit. A Henry Ford Health dietitian visits the park weekly to provide nutrition education, help people explore the market, and give out free recipes and food tastings based on available produce.

"People get to taste different things. Then they come back and say, 'What do you have for me this week?'" Blum-Alexander says. "And then sometimes we hear ... that there are people who are collecting all the recipes every week."

Dana Jay, manager of public and media relations for Henry Ford Health, anticipates that parks will continue to play a big role in promoting health for the southeast Michiganders who need it most.
Steve KossPeople play basketball during a Pistons Neighbors program session in Rouge Park.
"The more we can engage in programs that allow people to be healthy, especially in the city of Detroit, the more we help work towards our mission of addressing inequities in health care," she says. "It's just one of the many ways that we try to achieve our mission."

Click here to read more from the Equity in Our Parks series.

Patrick Dunn is the lead writer for the Equity in Our Parks series. He's also the managing editor of Concentrate and an Ypsilanti-based freelance writer and editor.

Photos by Steve Koss.