Growing Healthy Food, Family and Communities: Utilizing Community-Based Wellness Coalitions to Create Healthy Rural Communities in High Need Counties - Research has shown us that environmental change needs to be brought about through a process of community dialogue, community decision-making, and community action. This fosters making the healthy choice an easy choice for individuals. South Dakota State University (SDSU) Extension is requesting funding to conduct community-based intervention strategies that reduce obesity through our Extension outreach. The purpose of the project is to utilize community wellness coalitions (CWCs) in seven South Dakota (SD) high obesity counties (Buffalo, Corson, Dewey, Mellette, Oglala Lakota, Todd, and Ziebach,) to prevent and reduce obesity of children, youth, and their families. CWCs and School Wellness Coalitions (SWCs), facilitated by SDSU Extension, will receive targeted and relevant technical assistance with the goal of building capacity. Both CWCs and SWCs will engage in strategic planning using previous needs assessment data that will guide decision making and outline activities as they relate to the nutrition and physical activity strategies. Over the long-term, these strategies will improve health behaviors, and reduce health disparities in chronic conditions by increasing access to healthier foods, and increasing policies, plans or community design changes that increase access to physical activity.
In Year 1, SDSU Extension and their collaborators (e.g. Department of Transportation) will engage and support partners to strengthen existing or create new CWCs in one community in each county. In partnership with CWCs, additional needs assessment data will be collected in the areas of health equity and community design. CWCs will select at least one partner organization for each strategy that has the potential to impact the CWCs will develop and implement a strategic plan based on needs assessment data. SDSU Extension will also engage partners in one school in each county to strengthen or create new SWCs. Schools are a ‘hub’ for nutrition and PA in extremely rural communities, providing meals and opportunities for PA. In partnership with SWCs the School Physical Activity and Nutrition Environment Tool (SPAN-ET), the SPAN-ET will guide strategic planning and implementation as it assesses the nutrition and physical activity environments. SDSU Extension will also establish a state-level coalition that focuses on nutrition incentive and produce prescription that will inform local level work in priority counties and throughout the state. The goal of creating this coalition is to coordinate and increase the uptake of nutrition incentive and produce prescription programs.
In Years 2-5, CWS and SWCs, and the state-level coalition will continue to receive targeted and relevant technical assistance from SDSU Extension. In Year 3 CWCs and SWCs will re-engage in strategic planning to identify activities to implement in the final 2 years and future steps. Utilizing this community-based approach allows coalitions and communities to have ownership over the activities they select, which will result in greater success and sustainability
This project will realize the following short-term outcomes: 1) Increased access to healthier foods, 2) Increased policies, plans, or community design changes that increase access to physical activity. While it is not the requirement of CDC to meet the identified intermediate and long-term outcomes, SDSU Extension feels strongly that this project will aid in meeting those outcomes in priority counties.
Those outcomes include the following intermediate outcomes: 1) increased purchasing and distribution of healthier foods, 2) increased access to places for PA; and the following long term outcomes: 1) improved health behaviors and outcomes, and 2) reduced health disparities in chronic conditions.
