Demographic of Clifton Park, NY
The community I will be focusing on is Clifton Park, NY, and the surrounding areas (when applicable). The racial makeup of Clifton Park is 89.2% white, 1.8% African American, 4.5% Asian, 2.7% Hispanic, 1.5% two or more races, and 0.2% other. Our town has a median household income of $116,802 compared to the state median income of $64,894 which means that our demographic is mostly middle to upper-class. We have a median age of 42.1 years old (1).
This outlines the general statistics of my community’s population, but it is important to note that not everyone falls in these median values and it is important to consider the extremes of these categories as well. For example, while the median age is 42.1 years old, around 24% of our population is 60 or older. This is a concern right now with COVID-19 since the virus is particularly dangerous for older people.
As the frequent need for dog walkers, pet sitters, and the presence of multiple local veterinary facilities would indicate, my community is also full of pet owners. What people often forget is that as much as we humans are at the mercy of this pandemic, our pets are still reliant on us to give them the best possible care. This will be important to remember throughout the blog, but for now, I just want to draw attention to the fact that there could be at-risk elderly pet owners who are struggling right now since it would be pretty dangerous if they had to go out and buy pet food or take a pet to the vet. I will come back to this idea at a later point in the blog. Besides genetics and demographics, there are other factors that influence the overall health of a community. Some of these factors include access to safe environments to exercise and access to healthy food.
Access to Safe Outdoor/Exercise Environments (for people and their pets)
Fortunately, there are many local public parks and trails where people can walk, play, and get exercise; some of these are Clifton Common, Kinns Road Park, Mary Jane Row Dog Park (for our 4-legged friends!) and many more which can be found here. There are also some other walking trails and parks just a short drive out of Clifton Park including the Zim Smith Trail, The Crossings Park of Colonie, and a variety of hiking trails a little further north toward the Adirondacks (these would require a longer drive, but worth it!). Note that with the current pandemic it is important that if you go to any public place including parks such as these you should definitely be social distancing! Clifton Park also has a wide variety of recreational sports for kids and numerous gyms where people can buy memberships (this, of course, is not viable right now).
Access to Healthy Food
The final factor I would like to focus on is access to healthy food. If people are looking to get food, in general, we have multiple large grocery stores including Market 32 and Hannaford. However, if the focus is organic produce, there are many places to find it including DeVoe’s Rainbow Orchards, the Troy Summer Farmer’s Market, and the Clifton Park Farmers’ Market (2). Some farmer’s markets have already started to adapt to COVID-19, for example, the Schenectady Greenmarket has made some changes that are outlined here including requiring face masks (and forcing people to leave if they refuse), abiding by social distancing, and delineating vendors with chalk outlines. While even they admit, “It’s not going to look like the market that everyone is used to,” it is a great resource for people to get healthy food and support local farms and food producers.
I would say Clifton Park has a lot of good resources to help people stay healthy in general. Based on this, I am hopeful that there will be support as we battle COVID-19 as a community.
Sources
(1) http://www.city-data.com/city/Clifton-Park-New-York.html
(2) https://www.cliftonpark.com/shopping/farmers-markets/
Photos:
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Clifton-Park-s-population-growth-dips-slight-11200864.php
https://www.cliftonpark.com/parks/recreation/