Bicycling has tremendous potential to improve communities throughout the United States at a time of crippling highway congestion, poor air quality, costly energy dependence, and a growing obesity epidemic due to physical inactivity. America Bikes believes bicycling can improve the economic prosperity and quality of life in American communities by ensuring access to jobs, goods and services regardless of income, age or ability.

Parents looking for a safe and healthy way to get kids to school might want to consider this option: a bus that wears sneakers. Rob Capriccioso explores how some communities have found ways to leave the mini-van behind this school year.

The Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center is a clearinghouse for information about health and safety, engineering, advocacy, education, enforcement and access and mobility. The PBIC serves anyone interested in pedestrian and bicycle issues, including planners, engineers, private citizens, advocates, educators, police enforcement and the health community.

Nearly half of America's youth, ages 12 to 19, rarely break a sweat, putting them at risk for obesity and diabetes. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJ) says that over the past 50 years, we've essentially engineered physical activity out of our lives. RWJ's "The Shape We're In" handbook has step-by-step instructions for getting coverage in your local press, organizing community events, and support materials for this public awareness campaign, due to launch in newspapers nationwide June 2.

More than 2 million teenage and pre-teen girls turn to YM for advice on boys, beauty and fashion. But thanks to new editor Christina Kelly, readers looking for diet tips will have to go elsewhere. This article appeared in WomensEnews.com.

According to the U.S. Depts. of Health and Human Services and Education, "our nation's young people are, in large measure, inactive, unfit and increasingly overweight," threatening to reverse decades-long progress in reducing death from cardiovascular diseases. The report identifies a number of ways families, schools and communities can encourage and improve opportunities for physical activities.

Has your pediatrician given you advice on your child's TV viewing? In August, the American Academy of Pediatrics identified our children's TV habits as a national health hazard, contributing to kids' obesity, and serving them an unhealthy portion of murder, consequence-free sex and commercial messages every year. Kevin Taglang looks at the TV landscape and offers clear strategies for managing "the box."

Teenagers across the country can help organize campaigns to reduce air pollution and traffic congestion by promoting safer and easier bicycle use in their communities.