A list of everything on this site
A healthy community is created like a jigsaw puzzle, one piece at a time. Plan your pieces!
Scroll down and find a one-stop-shopping list of every activity on the site, a menu to choose from. Each link takes you to a page full of resources.
Suggestion: Work your way through the site, a few pages at a time. By the time you finish, you’ll know about a wide range of possibilities and know what other West Virginia communities are doing.
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Get the community involved = create lasting change:
Make the economic development case for fitness / healthy food activities:
Funding: $$: How to increase your grant success + grant sources
Expand the supply of fresh, unprocessed food:
- Start/expand a farmers market
- Plant community gardens
- Get convenience stores to sell fresh produce
- Build a high tunnel greenhouse
- Find ways to distribute/ package/ sell locally-grown foods
- Encourage home gardening
- Promote food preservation
- Feature healthy items in grocery stores
- Set up healthy cooking classes
- Teach people to read labels and comparison-shop.
- Expand/create a farm to school program
- Make your food pantries healthier
- Breastfeed babies = extra immunities
Make it easy for people to be physically active:
Running and walking. How to:
Trails and sidewalks. How to:
Bicycling. Try this:
Water! Paddling, fishing, swimming. How to:
Getting kids active outside school:
Help people get a handle on diabetes, heart disease and others:
Make sure kids get healthy food – and learn about healthy food – at school:
- Create a school gardening program
- Start or expand a Farm to School program
- Teach kids nutrition: how to make healthy food choices
- Help schools build high tunnel greenhouses
- Teach healthy cooking: cook the food they raise
- Use healthy snacks as teaching tools
- Support efforts to make school meals more nutritious
- Provide healthy school breakfast
- Pay attention to presentation of school food
How local officials can help (besides encourage any of the above):
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- Join or help form a community-wide healthy lifestyles group
- Adopt a complete streets policy: bikes, vehicles and pedestrians
- Approve shared use agreements to use public buildings/school gyms after hours
- Help create public access to rivers and lakes
- Support water trail designation
- Do a walkability / bikability assessment
- Make a safe biking map
- Create bike parking
- Make it legal to raise food and small animals in town
- Build sidewalks
Other important pages coming soon:
- Troops and volunteers
- Churches
- Seniors
- Get school wellness councils going
- Create healthy child care centers
For Kate Long- I love this website! I spoke with Jennifer Boyd, and she recommended that I reach out to Kate Long. I think we have some projects and materials that would be most helpful to add to this website. I love what you are doing and would welcome the opportunity to speak with Kate Long regarding our work. This is fantastic.
Thanks, Ernestine. You can contact me at kate_long@hotmail.com. I know you’re with the American Heart Association, and I would be very glad to talk with you and incorporate your materials into the site.
Great site! Very nice. I’ll be sharing with friends and students.
Thanks, Matthew! We’ll get in touch! Research says that, if there was only one thing we could do to reduce childhood obesity, it would be to find alternatives to pop and sugar drinks.
A few years ago I was at the local swimming pool and saw that the snack shack served only junk. French fries, candy, chips, pizza and, of course, soda. I talked to the rec director about this. The result was that started selling sour pickles. Not a bad start, but that’s about it. I need to go talk to her again, and maybe show her this site.
All right, Richard! If lots of us would do what you did, we’d have better choices. Other places have found that fruit, nuts and little packs of celery, carrots and dip sell, for instance. We’re going to put up a Healthy Celebrations page soon, with ideas along this line.
Love the site and will share with everyone I know!
Thanks, Cathy. The more people who know about it, the more can use it!
Dear Kate and others– thanks for your lovely work and this site. I am interested in connecting with you, as I have been doing work in creative writing with palliative care patients, the elderly, and others, often referred to as “narrative medicine.” I am looking for ways to collaborate and grow this work. You can read a bit about the work I have done at http://www.reneenicholson.com/narrative-medicine/. I hope perhaps this might be a place to start. Best, Renee
I think teen and unwanted pregnancies hurt a community and maybe we all aren’t doing enough to work on this. If people who aren’t ready to have kids do have kids, that puts extra stress on the parents and give the kids a disadvantage from the start.
Can you help me reach Keri Kennedy of the WV Farm to School Community Development Group Forward Fund. Her phone is not connected. I am a small farmer that is enrolled in the project.
I am writing to see if there are items sold at the conference. If so, I would love to bring some Tee shirts and decals for my Happiness campaign, striving to bring more positivity into WV and about WV. I have a site: http://www.happinessisastateofmine.com which will give background and you can see the shirts. I also listed your organization in the Resource section of the site. I have other decals pertaining to Advocacy and Localism that one of my sons makes. I am not interested in making money and would be happy to sell at discounted costs—just want the message out.A great TEDx talk by one of the brothers that started Life is Good—really gives the story of how effective and encouraging one slogan can be.The talk is called “The Power of Optimism” by Bert Jacobs. I appreciate your consideration. I was too late last year in signing up for the Conference but made sure I registered early this year. Sincerely, Margie Carson
We don’t do exhibitors or have anyone come that is “selling” stuff. Even awesome stuff like this. Glad you are registered for the conference this year, look forward to seeing you there. Make sure to book a hotel soon, rooms are filling up fast. Also there are dorm rooms available for $30, you can book those through our website.