Spring Valley Deemed 'Active' in Community Wellness Survey

Spring Valley is one of the most active East County communities, according to California Endowment ReConnect survey results.

Santee, Lakeside and Spring Valley are the most active communities, and Mount Empire, Lemon Grove, El Cajon and La Mesa are the least active communities, according to the results.

“We were interested in taking a look at people’s perception on if they have access to exercise, access to healthy nutrition and if they’re using parks now as a way to maintain their health,” said Wendy Hileman, president of Healthy Adventures Foundation, and the principal investigator who coordinated the surveys.

Survey 1 focused on the overall health and wellness perceptions of survey respondents, Survey 2 focused on the overall perceptions of access to healthy nutrition, and Survey 3 focused on parks and recreation.

The first survey found that walking is overwhelmingly the first choice of exercise in East County communities. After El Cajon, Spring Valley is the community that walks and bikes the most, according to the results. 

East County communities, except for Lakeside and Mount Empire, also selected parks as their first choice of places to exercise. Other options included their home, gym, beach, school and other. Lakeside and Mount Empire chose their home first, then parks.

“We really want to highlight parks as a way for people to maintain their health, and, really, as a community forum where people can meet, whether it be for exercise or talking about nutrition and community gardens,” Hileman said.

Respondents said some parks should be avoided, however.

Wells, Rennette and Lindo Lake parks, which are located in El Cajon and Lakeside, were selected as the top three parks to avoid after “other.” Lamar and Spring Valley, which are located in Spring Valley, as well as Skyline, tied for fifth.

Of the reasons given, 30.5 percent said safety/gangs, 24.1 percent said homelessness and 10.2 percent said location. Spring Valley respondents selected homelessness as their top answer.

Hileman said Spring Valley’s answers suggest residents feel safe even though the common perception is that the community isn't safe.

“I think that Spring Valley kind of has a bad reputation. In general, people say, ‘Oh that’s a gang area’ and things like that,” Hileman said. “When you look at it from a resident’s perspective, the residents don’t necessarily feel unsafe in that community.”

In addition to using parks, Spring Valley is the community that most uses its community center, according to survey results. Spring Valley is also the most informed community about local recreation programs, according to the results.

Spring Valley respondents said preschool, youth fitness, youth enrichment, youth team sports, teen activities, adult/senior hobby/craft and adult/senior education programs are the “most important” programs to have in the community. Only adult/senior fitness programs were selected as the “least important.”

“I was really pleased to see that Spring Valley, of all the communities that got surveyed, that they were most aware of and use the ,” said Christine Lafontant, the recreation program manager for the county of San Diego Department of Parks and Recreation. “It really means that we’re doing a good job marketing the community center and that we are providing programs that people enjoy and use.”

As for healthy nutrition, all East County communities said that having fresh food, affordable food and healthy options are the three most important factors, respectively. Having prepared foods was least important, according to survey results.

Spring Valley respondents, as well as La Mesa and Lemon Grove respondents, said having healthy options was the most important. This was the least important to Santee, Lakeside and Mount Empire, respectively.

The top three communities eating at home are Spring Valley, Mount Empire and Lemon Grove, according to survey results. The top three communities that eat at restaurants are Santee, Lakeside and La Mesa, according to the results.

Still, Spring Valley respondents said they often eat at fast food restaurants.

Spring Valley, Santee and El Cajon, respectively, had the highest utilization of fast food restaurants—once per day or at least once per day—according to survey results. The majority of survey respondents said they eat at fast food restaurants because of convenience.

“California is not overly healthy,” Hileman said. “It’s certainly not the lowest or the worst, but it definitely still has higher incidents of childhood obesity than other areas, so there is a lot of work that can be done in this area to improve people's health.”

Hileman and Lafontant said they hope the surveys will encourage park use. They also hope communities will use the survey results for strategic planning.

Lafontant said the Department of Parks and Recreation is already using the information to help determine what improvements need to be made to parks. In fact, a “volunteer pad” will be installed at Lamar Park in the near future to help increase safety, Lafontant said. The pad will offer free RV hookups in exchange for park volunteer services, she explained.

“Since they live there, it really increases the safety of that location,” Lafontant said. “We really want to make improvements to that park to increase the safety so that people use it for exercise and time with their family.”

The department will also use the survey results to help determine what programs communities want and need, Lafontant said.

Spring Valley respondents selected family game night, movies in the park and historical appreciation as their top three responses when asked which community events they would be most interested in attending.

“We really want to use what the community says as we’re going forward and developing our plans and programs for the future,” Lafontant said. “We use these assessments all the time to really see what the community wants and make sure our programs reflect that.”

Surveyors sought to collect surveys from the lowest socioeconomic and highest risk populations in East County. Most of the surveys were collected in person from food distribution sites. Surveys were also collected in cooperation with the Mount Empire School District, local churches, community centers, health fairs, community events and family resource centers.

There were 1,686 surveys collected for the first questionnaire, 1,943 surveys collected for the second questionnaire and 1,807 surveys collected for the third questionnaire.