🔬 Power of Sports — The Overlay
Youth sports participation laid over the broadband, income, and health layers the Scorecard already holds. The question it answers: do the communities that move least also have the fewest places — and least access — to play?
The correlation, in real numbers: youth participation runs from New Hampshire's 74.3% down to Nevada's 43%. Adult inactivity runs from Colorado's 17.7% up to Mississippi's 33.2%. The favorable-activity states (Vermont, Colorado) sit at the top of participation and the bottom of inactivity — the laggards invert. That inverse relationship is the thesis the Scorecard tests ZIP-by-ZIP.
Youth Participation, 2024 REAL · Project Play
Adult Physical Inactivity REAL · CDC BRFSS
How the real overlay works — a live join, not a mock
The participation layer joins to three layers already loaded in the Scorecard. For any ZIP, county, or state, the panel returns participation plus its rank against each layer — surfacing the "low-broadband, low-income ZIPs play least" story with a real coefficient, not an assertion.
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Broadband
FCC / ACS — access %
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Income
Census ACS — median HH
❤️
Health
CDC PLACES — inactivity, obesity
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Participation
Project Play / NFHS — NEW layer
Coach LucyThis is the panel that turns the Scorecard from a scoreboard into an argument. When a Health Director sees their low-broadband ZIPs are also their low-participation ZIPs, that's the moment a Prevention Bingo push or a Foundation scholarship stops being a nice idea and becomes a targeted intervention.
Sources: Aspen Institute Project Play — State of Play 2025 (participation, 2024 data) · CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System physical-inactivity maps · join layers: CDC PLACES, U.S. Census ACS, FCC broadband (all already in the PHIT Scorecard pipeline).