Promoting small business support of youth physical activity in low-income, minority neighborhoods (Preprint)

Background An unacceptably high percentage of our nation’s low-income, minority youth (age<18 years) are not regularly physically active. One reason for this could be their lack of access to quality youth physical activity opportunities (YPAOs). Our previous research found that small businesses (<500 employees), which represent over 99.64% (27.9/28.0 million businesses in United States) of all employers, are powerful resources for creating and improving YPAOs. In accordance with the socioecological model and established philanthropic principles, we developed an alpha version of an intervention (alpha-i) for increasing small businesses’ involvement with YPAOs.