With an epidemic of overweight and inactivity continuing to take its toll, with high medical costs and increased rates of chronic illness, many communities are looking for new ways to encourage people to get fit. While you'll never get everyone who needs to exercise to sign up for a gym membership, there are ways to boost fitness opportunities in the great outdoors.

The most successful swimming pools provide effective programming to attract a range of swimmers, from kids learning to swim to seniors swimming laps. In this day and age, though, many pools find it difficult to compete with the bells and whistles provided by more modern, waterpark-like facilities.

The best parks provide a place where everyone can get engaged, whether it's in exercise and activity, play or sport, or just enjoying a picnic and gazing at a beautiful view. There are so many options for outfitting a park site, it can be difficult to determine the best options for your community.

Indoor aquatic facilities often suffer from poor air and water quality, especially with high bather loads. These problems can create health problems for swimmers, and can even cause damage to facility equipment. New recommendations from the Model Aquatic Health Code (MAHC) suggest the use of a secondary sanitation system in these cases

When your aquatic facility hosts a wide variety of programs, including a combination of swim clubs and meets with recreational swimming and aquatic exercise, it can be difficult to ensure the right equipment is in place at the right time—and safely stowed away when it's not needed. Manufacturers of aquatic equipment have come up with a wide range of solutions that can help you make the most of limited space.

When building new playgrounds, many communities are trying to find ways to create a space that is imaginative and unique, offering a destination for local families and visitors alike. Creating a play destination might seem like a challenging undertaking, but it doesn't have to be difficult.

From daily wear and tear to harsh weather to vandalism, you need to make sure you know how to handle the regular maintenance needs of your restroom structures—and how to deal with damage when it does occur. If you begin with a well-constructed restroom structure designed to fit the needs of your site and then follow proper maintenance practices, you're off to a good start.

Recreation, sports and fitness facilities present unique challenges to the folks who run them every day. Some of those challenges are minor and relatively simple to fix, while others are big problems that require big investments.

Welcome to our annual Problem-Solver Idea Book.Packed with scores of ideas, this reference tool was designed to help you tackle your most persistent and universal challenges, covering all the big basic questions. Consider it an industry guidebook of sorts, chock full of straightforward problem-solving tips.

Parks, sports, recreation and fitness facilities are finding innovative new ways to save money and make their budgets work. Whether through energy conservation, creative partnering or any of a number of other methods, these new strategies are delivering results.