{"id":462392,"date":"2023-05-30T19:17:08","date_gmt":"2023-05-30T19:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uat.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/blog\/?post_type=blog&p=462392"},"modified":"2025-04-07T22:19:29","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T22:19:29","slug":"finding-a-pathway-to-federal-funding","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/blog\/articles\/finding-a-pathway-to-federal-funding","title":{"rendered":"Finding a Pathway to Federal Funding"},"content":{"rendered":"

A state health department uses federal funds to develop a statewide recreation database<\/h2>\n\n

A question I\u2019m often asked is \u201cIs there federal funding for my GIS?\u201d The short answer is yes!

The more complicated answer is that you won\u2019t be able to search \u201cGIS\u201d to find it. However, you will be able to find grants that support your organization\u2019s mission. Additionally, the language of the grant requirements can be key to aligning your GIS use with the purpose of the grant. For example, many grants have language around \u201cdata-driven decision making\u201d, \u201cstakeholder collaboration\u201d, \u201cequity and transparency\u201d, \u201cpublic engagement\u201d, \u201cinnovative research\u201d and more. These are all supported by GIS. Consider too that the goals that these grant programs seek to achieve require inter-agency and inter-departmental cooperation, paving the way for greater understanding and adoption of an enterprise-wide GIS system.

When I worked for the State of Tennessee in their Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), we were just getting a park-wide GIS off the ground. One of the datasets that was in the highest demand was a trails dataset for the entire state. Every five years, the State Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan was reviewed and revised. In order to reach communities and gather information about their recreational assets, a spreadsheet was sent out. These spreadsheets didn\u2019t provide a trail or greenway track, and the information that it did provide was often incomplete and inconsistent. This meant that someone was stuck with translating and synthesizing this information into a single source before any analysis or planning could ever be done, without any way to identify community gaps.

Out of the blue one day in 2017, John Vick with the Tennessee Department of Health gave me a phone call asking about a state-wide trails dataset. They had an idea to be able to provide a website where doctors could query a database of trails for their patients and \u201cprescribe\u201d them exercise based on their needs, accessibility, and physical abilities.<\/p>\n\n

According to County Health Rankings, 36% of adults in Tennessee are overweight or obese<\/a>, and 24% of adults don\u2019t participate in recreational physical activity<\/a>. For high-schoolers, the rate is even higher at 38% who are overweight or obese. While Tennessee boasts incredible outdoor recreation opportunities, it can be difficult to know where to go or what you might be getting into when you get there. It is also difficult to know what\u2019s closest to you, immediately. While there is at least one state park within an hour\u2019s drive of every Tennessean, what about within a short walk? The greenways or city and county trails? And are there disparities between who has access to outdoor recreation and who doesn\u2019t? While I was in love with the idea, I had a well-practiced script about the limitations of the existing dataset, but I agreed to participate in the first roundtable discussion. In addition to lengthy discussions on what \u201cdefines\u201d a trail or greenway, we also discussed logistical challenges to collect the data. These included a lack of person power to collect the spatial information, and communities that lacked the resources for GIS tools. I proposed using an ArcGIS Hub that would allow us to provide these tools to volunteers and to have a built-in schema so the data would come to us clean. Yet, we still didn\u2019t have funding \u2013 the biggest logistical issue of all.<\/p>\n\n

On that day in 2017, we had no way of knowing that a global pandemic was around the corner and that John\u2019s question and interest was about to be more relevant than ever. Through the years, the group worked on the concept for the trails database, but again, funding always remained elusive. When the pandemic hit, one of the earliest things we understood was related to risk factors for hospitalizations and deaths related to COVID-19 \u2013 which included obesity. Suddenly, Vick had an \u201cah ha\u201d moment.

\u201cWe wanted to look way upstream and identify these risk factors [for COVID-19] and find solutions to mitigate them,\u201d said Vick. \u201cAddressing obesity, heart disease, and other chronic conditions are important for preventing severe cases of COVID. We also know that parks and other outdoor spaces were a lifeline for people during the pandemic, giving them a way to stay active, support mental health, and safely be around their family and friends.\u201d His original vision for the database was suddenly rooted in an immediate, global emergency.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
The idea for the Tennessee Trails Recreation Environment Community (TREC) hub was many years in the making, mainly due to lacking funding. A silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic was that it led to the federal funding TN needed to execute this GIS-based project. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Vick turned to the CDC\u2019s COVID Disparities grant, funded through the 2021 Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. The grants provide funds to states to specifically reduce health disparities related to COVID-19, and provides support to directly address these issues in communities that need it most. The goals were to discover where outdoor spaces for physical activity were lacking so they could help mobilize resources to increase access, provide a resource for communities to find places for outdoor recreation in their communities, and to promote their health benefits.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
The Tennessee TREC map helps users clearly identify where outdoor spaces for physical activity are lacking.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

The TNDOH was collaborating with Tennessee Strategic Technology Solutions (STS) for technical implementation. The grant funding not only supplied STS with the funds to merge multiple data sources and develop a standardized geodatabase of parks, greenways, and trails for the state, but also supported the purchase of Esri\u2019s Professional Services to help strategize, advise and prototype the initiative via ArcGIS Hub Premium. Now, in 2023, nearly 7 years after we first began discussing it, the Tennessee\u2019s Trails Recreation Environment Community (TREC) website is about to be released this fall.

It would be a mistake to think that this is the final culmination of this journey, however. The TREC will be a living database, supported by a community of users throughout Tennessee. It not only supplies information on Tennessee\u2019s recreational opportunities, but provides the tools that communities need to fill in gaps in the data. While the grant helped facilitate the purchase of the ArcGIS Hub Premium platform for this particular initiative, the fact that it can be used to deploy an unlimited amount of initiatives means that any Department throughout the State of Tennessee can benefit from the platform.
<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
ArcGIS Hub allows for the addition and edits of park boundaries by participants in the TREC database.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

For trails, the data can be leveraged by any stakeholder, including TDEC, who are tasked with updating the State\u2019s Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan (SCORP) every five years. No longer scraping together excel spreadsheets that provide only a limited view across the state, TDEC now will have a dynamic, authoritative resource to pull from when assessing Tennessee\u2019s SCORP. Not only will other state agencies benefit from this resource, but all Tennesseans seeking a more sustainable, healthier future.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Tennessee agencies can now all benefit from the TREC living database, which is supported by a community of users throughout the state. It not only supplies information on recreational opportunities, but provides the tools that communities need to fill in gaps in the data. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

There may not be a dedicated federal fund for GIS, but there are numerous opportunities to align your GIS to program missions. Right now, through ARPA, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, the Inflation Reduction Act and more, there are unprecedented funds that can be used to support outdoor recreation, conservation and environmental initiatives. The relationship between our environment, our economics and our social systems is more recognized than ever before, and GIS is uniquely positioned to see all three at once across a landscape. As GIS practitioners, we have a great opportunity to align our GIS needs with our program missions to take full advantage of these funds and to help create a more sustainable world.

Explore how GIS can support federal stimulus program efforts<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":882,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[831],"tags":[841,2102,339,2962],"class_list":["post-462392","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment-and-natural-resources","tag-environment","tag-environmental-management","tag-health","tag-health-and-human-services","industry-environment-and-natural-resources"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFinding a Pathway to Federal Funding<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/industries\/blog\/articles\/finding-a-pathway-to-federal-funding\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Finding a Pathway to Federal Funding\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A state health department uses federal funds to develop a statewide recreation database A question I\u2019m often asked is \u201cIs there federal funding for my GIS?\u201d The short answer is yes! The more complicated answer is that you won\u2019t be able to search \u201cGIS\u201d to find it. 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