Wearing out the walking trail

BALTIMORE -- When nurses at the Open Gates Health Center prescribed exercise to overweight women in two of the city's poorest neighborhoods they got an earful -- there was no safe place to take a walk.

That response inspired the center's nursing students to map out a short walking trail in Carroll Park for the residents of Pigtown and Washington Village.

"They want to take control of their health," said Marge Jozsa, executive director of Open Gates, a nonprofit health-care center for low-income and uninsured people. "You don't need to have a glitzy gym or club and pay hundreds of dollars a month because the folks in this community don't have those resources."

Joyce Sloan, 68, a retired factory worker, never considered joining a gym, even though she suffers from obesity, thyroid problems, high cholesterol and osteoporosis.

"I'm active, but not in the sense that I need to be," Sloan said, referring to her work with many community boards.

It was Edith Nelson, 63, who persuaded Sloan to come to the recent opening of the trail, which runs for four-tenths of a mile.

"I want to tell women to come out and get exercise," said Nelson, another retired factory worker. "It's good for the health, it's good for the body, it's good for the mentality. It relaxes you, gives you time to think, gets you away from home, gets you away from your problems, gets you away from your child and grandchildren. And it's a beautiful place."

Nelson usually walks around M&T Bank Stadium for an hour every morning and sometimes walks in Carroll Park.

"I never knew how far I was walking until my legs gave out," she said. "But now I know, and I know how many times to go around to make a mile or two miles or whatever."

Eleven University of Maryland nursing students measured and marked the mileage of the pre-existing paved trail, a loop lined with trees, as part of their semester working in the center.

West Baltimore has the highest mortality rates related to diabetes and heart disease in Maryland. That led to the students' efforts to make exercise easier for residents, particularly women, said Sarah Merkle, a 32-year-old student.

"There is no place for these women to walk. If you look on these streets around here, you see all the boarded-up houses," Merkle said. "Who wants to walk through bad parts of the neighborhood? And you have to stop at stop signs or stop at lights and traffic."

It's a relief to Susan Zator, the center's care coordinator, that she can finally recommend the park as a place for women to get some exercise.

"It gets kinda old telling them to climb the steps of their house and dust," Zator said. "It doesn't carry too much weight after a while."