Movement Opportunity Index / How It Works
The score, explained
What does a 0–100 movement opportunity score actually measure? How does it get calculated? And why does the number matter more than you might think?
HOW THE MOI COMPARES
What already exists, and where the MOI goes further
Walk Score, ParkScore, the AARP Livability Index, and the City Health Dashboard are all serious tools doing important work. Understanding precisely what each one measures and where each one stops is what defines the MOI’s specific contribution.
Full
Partial
No
Partial
WHERE THE MOI STANDS ALONE
Unique capability 1
Combines all four dimensions into one unified score
Every other tool measures supply, or outcomes, or participation, but never all four together. The MOI is the only framework that connects physical infrastructure to the behavior it enables to the health outcome it produces, in a single comparable number per neighborhood.
Unique capability 2
Diagnoses constraint type, not just gap size
Walk Score tells you a neighborhood scores 30. The MOI tells you it scores 30 because of a supply constraint, not a delivery constraint and that distinction determines whether you should build a rec center or run a community outreach program.
Unique capability 3
Generates a typed intervention roadmap per neighborhood
ParkScore tells you Chicago ranks 12th nationally. The MOI tells you Brownsville needs a supply intervention within 12 months and Harlem needs a delivery and trust intervention within 18 months. Actionable, typed recommendations are the MOI’s terminal output, not a ranking.
Unique capability 4
Explicitly excludes private facilities as an equity choice
Walk Score counts paid gyms. The MOI scores only publicly accessible movement infrastructure. It is the only tool that measures movement opportunity as it actually exists for residents regardless of income.
THE SCORING METHODOLOGY
How scores are produced
The MOI uses a proprietary scoring methodology to convert publicly available agency data into a composite
neighborhood score. The methodology draws from each of the four dimensions, applies NYC-calibrated
benchmarks developed specifically for this framework, and produces a single score from 0 to 100.
The detailed methodology including indicator specifications, benchmark rationale, and scoring logic is
available to verified researchers, institutional partners, and agency collaborators upon request.
To request access to the full technical methodology: MNHowell00@gmail.com (linked to mailto)
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Phase 1 score are research-informed estimates built from publicly available data. Phase 2 will validate these estimates against formal agency datasets ​
WHO THIS IS BUILT FOR
The MOI is designed for people who make
CITY AGENCIES
A unified cross-agency view
Translates fragmented data across
Parks, DOHMH, DYCD, DFTA, and
DOE into a defensible tool for budget
decisions and equity reporting.
COMMUNITY ADVOCATES
A common language for inequity
Specific, sourced, and hard to
dismiss. Turns neighborhood-level
underinvestment into something
visible and actionable in policy
conversations.
ELECTED OFFICIALS
A data-grounded policy tool
Sourced from public data, fully
auditable, and designed to support
constituent conversations and capital
prioritization.
FOUNDATIONS AND FUNDERS
A replicable diagnostic framework
A clear theory of change, validated
public data sources, and a defined
roadmap from proof-of-concept to
city-scale deployment
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RESEARCHERS AND ACADEMICS
An open collaboration framework
A composite index built on existing
agency datasets with active Phase 2
collaboration opportunities for data
science and public health partners
OTHER CITIES
A framework ready to travel
The four dimensions and intervention
logic are city-agnostic. What changes
city to city is the data pipeline and
benchmark calibration.
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WHAT COMES NEXT
Phase 2 expands the framework.
THE LIFECYCLE ARGUMENT
Movement deprivation doesn’t start in adulthood. It compounds across generations.
Every comparable framework — Walk Score, ParkScore, the City Health Dashboard — measures adult outcomes. None tracks what is happening to children in those same neighborhoods, or what that means for the adults they will become. The MOI’s Phase 2 expansion makes a claim no comparable framework makes: that movement equity is a lifecycle issue, not a current-state snapshot. A neighborhood that fails its children on movement is producing the next generation of Tier 1 adults.
THE FITNESSGRAM CORRELATION
NYC DOE FitnessGram data — annual fitness assessments for every student in grades K–12 — shows that schools in Brownsville, East New York, and the South Bronx consistently produce lower cardiovascular fitness scores than schools in Park Slope, the Upper West Side, and Flushing. The neighborhoods that score Tier 1 on adult movement opportunity are the same neighborhoods producing children with the lowest fitness outcomes. That is not coincidence. It is causation over time — and it is one of the most compelling data stories this framework can tell.
PHASE 2 CONFIRMED EXPANSION INDICATORS
Senior fall hospitalization rates
Fall-related ED visits and hospitalizations by community district, drawn from DOHMH emergency department surveillance and NYC SPARCS discharge records. Senior falls are a direct downstream consequence of chronic movement deprivation — inadequate balance training access, unsafe built environments, and absent fall prevention programming produce preventable injury at scale. A neighborhood that fails its senior residents on movement does not just produce poor D4 scores today. It produces the fall hospitalizations that appear in next year's health data.
Data sources: DOHMH Emergency Department Syndromic Surveillance · NYC SPARCS Hospital Discharge Data · DFTA Fall Prevention Program Enrollment · NYC DOT Pedestrian Injury Data
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Childhood movement metrics
NYC DOE FitnessGram performance scores, PE access rates, recess time, and DYCD after-school enrollment in movement-adjacent programming — disaggregated by school and community district. NYC has some of the most granular childhood movement data of any city in the country. Whether this becomes a set of sub-indicators within D3 or a dedicated fifth dimension will be determined during Phase 2 in collaboration with a data scientist. Either path makes the MOI the only movement equity framework to explicitly score what a neighborhood does for its children's physical development.
Data sources: NYC DOE FitnessGram Annual Report · NYC Open Data — School-level PE data · DYCD After-School Programs dataset · DOHMH Child Obesity Rates by Community District · DOE School Quality Reports
TECHNICAL DOCUMENTATION
For researchers and collaborators
Request technical documentation
To maintain the integrity of the methodology and understand how it is being applied, we ask collaborators to briefly introduce themselves before accessing the full technical materials.