Public parks are critical resources for physical activity in minority communities. Because residential proximity is strongly associated with physical activity and park use, the number and location of parks are currently insufficient to serve local populations well.

SOPARC is a reliable and feasible instrument for assessing physical activity and associated contextual data in community settings.

MPROVING THE QUALITY OF MENtal health care requires continued efforts to move evidence-based treatments of proven efficacy into real-world practice settings with wide variability in patient characteristics and clinician skill. 1 The effectiveness of one approach, collaborative care, is well established for primary care depression, 2-5 but has been infrequently studied for anxiety disorders, 6,7 despite their common occurrence in primary care. 8 The multiplicity of anxiety disorders and the fact that anxious patients are less likely to seek 9 and harder to engage 10 in treatment may be contributing factors. Furthermore, whereas effective treatment for both anxiety and depressive disorders relies in part on pharmacotherapy, psychosocial treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) are important for pa-tients who are anxious. Not only do these patients strongly prefer psychological treatment over medications, 10,11 but also CBT may have ad-Author Affiliations are listed at the end of this article.

We evaluated the impact of outdoor exercise equipment (FZ, Fitness Zones) in 12 parks serving diverse populations. We used the System for Observing Play and Recreation in Communities (SOPARC) to assess use and estimate energy expenditure prior to and twice after FZ installation. Park use increased more in FZ parks than in 10 control parks that did not get equipment, but the difference was not statistically significant. However, self-reports of being a new park user increased more in FZ parks, and estimated energy expenditure in FZ parks was higher at both follow-ups than at baseline. Installing Fitness Zones appears to be cost-effective (10.5 cents/MET increase) and most successful in parks in densely populated areas with limited facilities. Longer-term follow-up measures are needed to determine if the early increases in physical activity associated with the Fitness Zone installations are sustained.