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Anthropogenic climate change is a systemic threat to conservation goals and society at large, and parks and protected areas (PPAs) are uniquely positioned to play an important role in mitigating this crisis. Reducing global carbon emissions is critical for tackling climate change and we believe PPAs serve an important role in facilitating these reductions. Drawing from Thomas Heberlein’s framing of cognitive, technological, and structural fixes, and particularly the lesson that the most effective approaches include all three, we discuss ways that PPA managers can leverage each fix to reduce global carbon emissions. We present the three fixes as pillars of a holistic carbon emission mitigation approach in PPAs and use examples to contextualize each type of fix. However, each PPA is characterized by context-dependent attributes that require climate change “fixes” to be tailored to unique social, cultural, physical, and natural conditions for maximizing long-term sustainable solutions. Therefore, managers who seek to implement or expand carbon emission mitigation strategies may refer to this article, and the examples included herein, as a framework to identify the strengths of their current approaches and to explore areas that can be further developed. [This is a paper from “Systemic Threats to Parks & Protected Areas,” the 2020 George Wright Society Student Summit.]

As higher education classrooms are increasingly comprised of generation Z learners, healthcare educators should prepare to be intentional in fostering learning and professional identity development in a unique generation of student practitioners.

Effective communication with the public is critical for managing parks and enhancing visitor experiences. Visitors to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon (USA) were sampled on-site (n = 580) to explore social media uses and preferences. Three-fourths of visitors were active on at least one social media platform, and visitors associated different platforms with different uses. Consequently, visitors wanted to receive different types of park-related content on distinctive social media platforms. Additionally, visitors expressed the highest levels of trust in their family/close friends and National Park Service publications for getting trip-related information.

The teaching of professionalism is an established best practice in healthcare education. This chapter highlights a more recent focus among educators in health professions to impart not only standards of professionalism, but also to foster professional identity development as a key aspect of a student's transition to a practitioner.

Purpose: The System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities (SOPARC) is a valid, reliable method for understanding how people engage in physical activity (PA) in various permanent settings (e.g., parks) and contexts. However, its utility, reliability, and validity in temporary spaces has not been examined. Temporary spaces can provide PA opportunities often absent in low-income communities due to inadequate safe permanent PA spaces. Play Streets involve temporary closure of streets or other publicly accessibly spaces (e.g., parking lots, open-fields) to create safe play spaces for a specified time-period. We describe the utility, reliability, and validity of using SOPARC to assess PA in temporary spaces like Play Streets. Method: Trained SOPARC/iSOPARC (iPad App) research staff completed systematic observations during Play Streets occurring in four diverse low-income rural U.S. communities during summer 2017. Results: We successfully used iSOPARC to document PA and how spaces were used at Play Streets (n = 16), confirming its utility, reliability, and validity. Unlike observations of permanent spaces, target areas could not be pre-established since play spaces often changed during set-up, requiring time onsite to identify target areas and boundaries. Play areas frequently appeared and/or disappeared during Play Streets, and this was systematically addressed by using physical target area boundaries instead of activities. Conclusions: Understanding how temporary spaces are used for PA is critical for promoting their use. SOPARC/iSOPARC methods are useful in a Play Streets' context; however, systematic methods and training are needed to address inherent unpredictable and dynamic changes within and across target areas.

The role of peer teaching has long been established in academia as a means to foster student engagement in the classroom, increase student learning, and as a way to reduce faculty workload. This chapter highlights the direct and powerful positive impacts of engaging students as teachers upon the student providing the instruction, those receiving it, and the institution as well.

System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities (SOPARC) can provide accurate assessment of physical activity; however, the skills, time, and human resources necessary to collect/interpret SOPARC data can be challenging for community organizations. This article describes a more accessible adaptation of SOPARC using video recordings for community organizations to obtain physical activity feedback at Play Streets. Narrated panoramic video scans occurred every 30 minutes at each Play Street using an iPad. Videographers narrated: (1) sex, (2) age group (child, teen, adult, senior), and (3) activity level (sedentary, walking, vigorous) for everyone recorded. SOPARC video scans, in-person iSOPARC observations, and interviews were conducted with Play Streets implementors to determine validity and feasibility. Validity was examined using Lin's concordance correlation coefficient (CCC). In-person and video scans showed near perfect agreement for sedentary individuals (CCC =.95) and substantial agreement for active individuals (CCC =.72). Overall, community partners felt that they "could see how [the scans] could be useful" and "help[ed] see a bit more clearly what's happening." The method described here is a more accessible systematic observation approach to measure physical activity for communities implementing Play Streets. Further, this method can be used without research training while still providing valuable activity feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]