Healthy Parks, Healthy Person App

Abstract

Through its Department of Parks and Recreation, Prince George’s County is looking for ways to improve community health by developing a mobile application to aid in physical and mental wellness. This application will be used as a tool to promote and track the use of parks, trails, and open space and the reported impacts on health outcomes. With the stress induced by the events of the past year (including but not limited to the COVID-19 pandemic), physical and emotional health concerns have become increasingly prevalent issues that the County’s Department of Parks and Recreation could help address.

This project’s objective is to track the impact and performance of methods like ParkRx, which could prescribe the use of parks to citizens to increase healthy lifestyles in Prince George’s County. This will be accomplished by designing a mobile application that connects residents with available county parks, trails, facilities, and programs. The app will include a reward system that incentivizes engagement with these offerings, as well as track use metrics such as age, gender, and basic demographic information to help the county understand who is using what facilities and how often. The data collected through the app will be used by the Department of Parks and Recreation to assess the usage of its parks, facilities, and programs, to gauge where to focus its efforts in creating a physically and mentally healthier environment for Prince George’s County’s residents.

The people involved in this project included teams from Prince George’s County Department of Parks and Recreation. Katrina Williams, Edeline Dormevil, Edith Michel, Thomas Paolucci, Lynell Poyner, Michael Wigglesworth, and Bonnie Man were involved in developing the wireframes for this project.