Try This | 100-plus Ideas for Healthier West Virginia Communities

West Virginians inspiring West Virginians!

Want to see it in action? Click here.

Community by community!

Catch the energy in a wonderful one-minute video! Click here.

It’s up to us!

Together, we can make a difference. Click here to catch the feeling.

Join the movement …

with thousands of other West Virginians!

Parkersburg has added bike racks, bike lanes, colored crosswalks, trails and has even established an alternative transportation council to get more pedestrians and bicyclists onto the street. And once a year, when the city closes some streets to cars, local groups get into the act! (photo, courtesy The OPAM) This Web site is packed with hundred of do-able, practical ideas and great West Virginia...

Fitness activity = Economic development.

Want to attract business and families? Fitness helps!

A list of everything on this site

Many choices for your next steps toward a healthier community

Expand farmers markets.

Expand the fresh food supply + liven up the community..

Start a Youth Sports League

Volunteer Braxton parents run a 200-kid soccer club.

See you at the Try This Conference!

Communities from all over the state at West Virginia Wesleyan

Create a children’s gardening program

Kids love it, in or out of school

Minigrants! Minigrants!

It’s up to us! Project by project, we can create healthier communities … and have fun doing it! Try This Minigrants: 206 healthy-community projects statewide in 4 years! 2014-15 list 2015-16 list 2016-17 list … and now … 53 new healthy-community projects for 2017-18! Each project is...

Make Healthier School Meals

WV is a national leader in improved school food..

Prevent or control chronic diseases: type 2 diabetes, heart disease, etc.

… and type 2 diabetes thru free / low-cost classes

Operating instructions

navigating instructions and ways to get the most from the site

Offer fun challenges that get people moving

Williamson teams celebrate their “Walk to Los Angeles.”

Plant community gardens

Mingo seniors tend their community garden plots

Make a long-range plan!

An organized way to get a grip on all this

Create a regular community conversation.

Create Buckhannon meets every week.

Get those school kids moving!

Research shows: it helps body, mind and spirit

Form a healthy community group

and tips about ways to keep it going

Teach kids how foods affect them

The fat in chicken nuggets can make a girl cry!

Funding your community project: read this

Understand what funders want. Know where to look.

Use snacks to introduce new foods

Gilmer kindergartners enjoying fresh pineapple

‘The Shape We’re In’ series

Get lots of ideas from this award-winning Charleston Gazette series.

Ask convenience stores to sell fresh produce

More and more are doing it.

Create or grow a running/walking group

Parkersburg holds events, daily runs and clinics all year.

Healthy Bodies Healthy Spirits!

What can churches do?

Encourage breastfeeding

Make it easier for moms to breastfeed away from home

Start or expand Farm to School

Stable income for farmers, healthier food for kids

Get kids moving in after school programs

Beckley teens playing hall ball, mixing exercise and study.

Adult Sports Leagues

Parkersburg’s six adult ball teams keep up a busy schedule.

Encourage road biking

West Virginia bike clubs hit the road almost every week.

Get people dancing

Dancing and zumba are fun, aerobic and cheap!

Hula hoops, frisbees, frisbee golf and other fun, inexpensive stuff.

Create inexpensive fun.

Get community development training

Marlinton group with their WV-HUB coach

Build sidewalks … and they will walk and run.

Hambleton builds a new stretch each year.

Create active summer programs

Get kids off the couch, off the streets

Create/find a distribution system to sell locally-grown foods.

W.Va. is on it!.

Go fishing!

Flyfishing in particular can be great exercise.

Build a high tunnel greenhouse

Grow and learn about (and sell!) local food all year.

Sponsor a Girls on the Run program

… doing more than they thought they could

Encourage mountain biking

Tucker County HS bike club on the roll

Encourage healthy breakfast!

Kids who eat breakfast are less likely to be obese.

Agitate for everyday recess

Exercise helps kids physically, academically, socially

Set up healthy cooking classes

healthy meals on a shoestring budget

Start / expand a school-based health center.

= healthier children and school staff

Create a watershed association to protect and promote streams

West Virginians have formed more than 70 watershed associations, most small. The biggest groups – Cheat River Watershed Association, the Coal River Group and Deckers Creek Watershed Association – have staff and headquarters. They sponsor regular paddling trips and special events such as paddling festivals, runs along the river, children’s river festivals. They advocate for water quality with local, state and federal government and...

Help others while you get fit.

Offer ways for residents to exercise while they help their community

Healthy local food = economic development tool

Healthy local produce is in demand. The markets want it. The state is trying to produce it.

Open safe public access points to rivers and lakes

Can’t paddle if you can’t get on the water

Map your community’s walking/running/hiking trails

Several West Virginia communities have created maps of the waking/running/hiking/biking/ cross-country skiing trails in their area. They hand maps out to local residents and put them in their tourism/economic development package to draw people looking for a relaxing outdoor experience. The Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department mapped all the hiking and biking trails in its six-county area. Huntington-area bike commuters have mapped the safest biking routes....

Put up bike racks

When there are bike racks, more people ride bikes.

Apply to be a bike-friendly community

Official bike-friendly status gives communities a powerful economic development tool.

Offer beginner running classes.

Give people a comfortable, encouraging way to start.

Adopt a complete streets policy.

Smaller towns may not need bike lanes, but may need sidewalks, bike racks, etc.

Build and connect trails.

Encourage biking and hiking! Give yourself an economic development plus.

Get your river designated an official water trail.

It makes you eligible for more grants.

Rock Climbing

West Virginia is just beginning to explore the potential.

Start a diabetes coalition.

Since 2000, more than a dozen communities have created coalitions.

Make your community more walkable!

How can your streets be safer for bikes and pedestrians?

Get parents and kids exercising together.

When kids see parents exercise, they want to.

Grocery stores: Feature healthy items

Encourage healthy eating with healthy checkout aisles and displays.

Teach people to read labels

Hold classes in schools and grocery stores

Check your food pantry offerings

Offer nutritious food and cooking classes.

Start a kids’ running program

Make it fun, and they’ll come!

Build a park and/or playground.

Volunteers and government working together

Paddle and row the rivers and lakes

“West Virginia has beautiful rivers, and I’ve got grandparents on both sides who died of heart disease, so I’m determined not to get it,” Brent Samples of Charleston said. Among other things, he hits West Virginia rivers with his kayak whenever he can. Samples is not alone in his enthusiasm for paddling. West Virginia has some of the best paddling in the East, and...

Encourage food preservation

Every year, Margo Davis of Rock Cave preserves a cellar full of vegetables, fruits, and meats. “Most of our great-grandmas knew how to do it all,” she said. If you freeze, cure, smoke, pickle or otherwise preserve fresh food, you can eat well all year round and save money in the process, she said. “But most people don’t know how to do it anymore....

Encourage bike commuting / Make a safe biking map.

Huntington city planner Breanna Shell wants to make Huntington a Biking city with a capital B. She decided bike commuters – including her – should have an easily-available map of the friendliest, safest bike routes. “It’s important for the map to show roads that have wider lanes and less traffic, good surfaces,” she told WV Public Radio. She wanted people to know that, “although...

Attract kids to healthy foods by attractive presentation

Kids started eating more at lunch after Lincoln County’s Midway School switched to brightly-colored trays, principal Cheryl Workman observed. “People don’t realize, but many kids choose their food by the way it looks,” she said. “We go to a lot of effort to cook nutritious food from scratch, so we do whatever we can to make it look attractive.” The same thing goes for...

Create school Walk/Run for Fun groups

This is not the track team

Get kids jumping rope.

It doesn’t cost much to jump rope. Dozens of West Virginia schools now have jump rope teams. Some compete with each other. At Cabell County’s Martha Elementary, for instance, more than fifty 3rd through 5th-graders are on a jump rope team that competes in a league with six to eight other schools. In fact, Parkersburg native Tori Boggs, is now the world jump-rope champion! And the Jump...

Every month, a 5K for fun

Help people build a habit.

Encourage bike stores

“If you want people to ride bikes, it helps to have a bike store,” said Lewisburg’s Hill and Holler Bicycle Works owner Merrick Tracy. Bike stores often repair bikes and offer community programs. In 2000, there were less than 10 bike stores in West Virginia. Now there are about four dozen. “West Virginia is an ideal place to bike, and we’d like to get...

Share school buildings after hours

an answer for gym-less towns

Raise food, bees and hens in town.

In some towns, it’s legal. Is it in yours?

Promote home gardening

As late as the 1950s, most West Virginians raised a garden. By the year 2000, after processed foods saturated the market, only about a third of West Virginians raised a garden, and gardens were smaller, according to the American Gardening Association. Now the number is rising again. “People are starting to understand how harmful processed food can be to your health,” said Mira Danilovich, who directs...

Agitate for everyday recess

Exercise helps kids physically, academically, socially

Check your food pantry offerings

Offer nutritious food and cooking classes.

2015 Breakout session list: Try This conference

Try This …. and this … and this … and this … A smorgasbord of affordable, do-able ways to create healthier communities wait for you in Buckhannon, June 5 – 6! More than 100 of West Virginia’s most savvy presenters have volunteered their time to help create a healthier West Virginia. What a team! Full schedule here. Register here. Friday,...

The 2016 Breakout Session List: Try This Conference

Try This …. and this … and this … and this … A wonderful smorgasbord of affordable, do-able ideas are waiting for you in Buckhannon, June 3 – 4! More than 120 of your fellow West Virginians are volunteering their time to pack your head with healthy-community ideas! West Virginians trading ideas! Community by community, we’re creating a healthier state! Full...

2014 minigrant teams turned $82,000 into projects worth more than $750,000

2014 grants: $82,000 to 42 community teams. Our 42 teams rose to the challenge in 2014! The 2014 Try This minigrants ranged from $3,000 to $450. By October 1st, 66 percent of them had already exceeded at least one of their goals. When we award a minigrant, the team agrees to secure local match. By year’s end, the 2014 teams had used their minigrants as...

2017 Try This conference schedule

Thursday, June 1: Come early! Relax and be fresh for the conference! Enjoy special activities our partners created to piggyback on the conference. 9 – 5: Try This for Healthcare Professionals: a day of evidence-based strategies for identifying, preventing, and reversing obesity, diabetes and metabolic roots of disease. CEU credit available for doctors, nurses, and dieticians. 5 – 7 pm Chef Dale Hawkins’...

2017 Try This Conference Breakout Sessions

Try This …. and this … and this … and this … A wonderful smorgasbord of affordable, do-able ideas are waiting for you in Buckhannon, June 2-3 ! More than 130 of your fellow West Virginians are volunteering their time to pack your head with healthy-community ideas! West Virginians trading ideas! Community by community, we’re creating a healthier state! Full...

WV Healthy Bodies Healthy Spirits * October 15, 2016 * Info below

Statewide healthy faith meeting Oct. 3

Try This, Huntington area!

If you’re working for a healthier Huntington area … Celebrate what’s been done > brainstorm next steps July 14th at St. Mary’s Conference Center. / 2849 5th Avenue, Huntington / 9:00 – 3:00 PM Register here. Agenda here … and downloadable version below Come celebrate what’s already been done! … Trade ideas and resources! … Meet...

A wonderful year in 2015-16

Here’s the list of 2015-16 projects: $102,000 to 53 community teams. Barbour County Green Thumbs, Dirty Hands and Healthy Kids. Master Gardeners will pair with a PreK-8 school to create a garden that grows produce for the school cafeteria. Children will track production and learn about healthy eating. About 200 students will harvest six 4’x8’ raised vegetable garden beds. They will chart growth,...