, 2012). Like other CPPW communities, the SNHD used a portion of their grant funds to support PA. The SNHD’s strategies to

increase PA included selleck compound the promotion and improvement of local trails. We have previously reported on the characteristics and effect of its media campaign promoting trail use, where we observed a 52% increase in mean users per hour over six months (Clark et al., in press). This portion of the project involves the same trails but a longer time period and also includes an alteration to the trail environment. A recent review of trails and PA completed by Starnes et al. (2011) reports that trail use has been both positively and negatively associated with age, racial and ethnic minority status, and gender. The reviewers

also reported mixed results from studies investigating access to trails and levels of PA, and called for further click here research to investigate the relationship between trails and PA. Price et al. (2013) recently studied correlates of trail use in Michigan and reported higher levels of use among males, those with higher levels of education, and White race/ethnicity. Most previously published studies of trail usage are cross-sectional and rely on self-reported behaviors (Starnes et al., 2011). Few studies have reported on objective measures of trail use or changes in trail usage over time. Evenson et al. (2005) analyzed PA among those living near a new trail, before and after construction, but their study showed no significant increase in PA. Another study of the promotion of a newly constructed trail in Australia aminophylline used data from telephone surveys and objective counts to assess PA changes among people living nearby (Merom et al., 2003). The authors reported both an increase in cycling traffic and an increase in PA among one subgroup (Merom et al., 2003). Fitzhugh et al.

(2010) reported a positive effect on PA in adults when trail access was improved, but they did not report on the effect of signage. Price et al. (2012) studied seasonal variations in trail use among older adults, but they did not assess the effect of changing the trail environment. Although the presence of trail signage is noted in trail environment assessment tools (Troped et al., 2006), to our knowledge there are no published articles on the effect of trail signage on trail usage. Accordingly, the purpose of our study was to assess the longer term effects of the marketing campaign and to compare usage on trails which were altered by adding way-finding and incremental distance signage to usage on control trails which were not altered, using longitudinal data obtained from objective measures of trail use. We employed a quasi-experimental design with a comparison group to assess the effect of signage additions on trail use in Southern Nevada.