This thesis intends to demonstrate how capital infrastructure investments can be targeted objectively, using the "Safe Routes to School" (SRTS) program for context. SRTS impacts physical activity, a determinant of childhood obesity by encouraging children’s regular active transportation use. This thesis supports the widespread implementation of SRTS and has developed the "Shelling Model" to objectively identify schools for programming. Accordingly, the "Shelling Model" aims to objectively identify physical and socio-economic environment variables impacting HISD-E middle school neighborhoods’ walkability. The "Shelling Model" is a first step in creating a walkability index for which pedestrian orientation levels can be identified and schools targeted. This model facilitates the identification of variables, providing insight into neighborhood walkability levels. Revealed by statistically significant variables, in combination with Walkscore and Catchment regression models’ respective 45.5 and 13.6 Adjusted R-Square values, the "Shelling" archetype proves a useful tool for investigating the walkability of HISD-E middle school neighborhoods.

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With obesity in adolescents becoming a major health problem in the United States, there has been an expansion in the use of nutritional education programs as intervention. Effective nutrition education can decrease the incidence of obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases, type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension. This dissertation in practice proposes to design a nutrition education program, integrating farm and culinary activities into a nutrition education curriculum. The program is designed as a stand-alone program, but for this practice, implementation integrates the nutrition education program into the Film @ 6 after-school program – a STEM-focused program designed to assist sixth graders in their first year of middle school – at Southeast Middle School in Salisbury, Rowan County, North Carolina (NC). This experiential nutrition education program will provide instruction and activities in order to increase nutritional knowledge, improve culinary techniques, and increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, and minimally processed foods of sixth grade students as a means to address the overweight and obesity risks of middle school children. Children and adolescents are considered the priority population for intervention strategies because 70% of obese adolescents become obese adults and it is difficult to reduce excessive weight once established (Dehghan, Akhtar-Danesh, & Merchant, 2005).