Make the healthy choice an easy choice

The Corpening Memorial YMCA, along with help from local leaders, plans to start a process that would create healthier living in McDowell County.

The local YMCA plans to work with representatives from the city of Marion, McDowell County, McDowell County Schools, The McDowell Hospital, the local Health Department, Chamber of Commerce and key employers to assess how healthy people are living in McDowell and if they can live healthier.

Through this new effort, the Corpening YMCA and local leaders will measure community support for physical activity and healthy eating using a new tool — the Community Healthy Living Index (CHLI). CHLI enables community leaders to assess environments at the local and communitywide levels, including afterschool childcare programs, neighborhoods, schools and work sites. This new tool enables communities to make the healthy choice an easy choice, according to a news release from the Corpening YMCA.

Developed by YMCA of the USA with researchers from Stanford University, Harvard University and St. Louis University, CHLI incorporates the review of more than 100 existing assessment tools, input from a prestigious advisory task force, a reiterative review process and pilot testing. Following the assessment, the local sites that participate will develop an action plan that will enable them to plan for policy and environmental change strategies, identify and remove barriers and expand opportunities for healthy living.

“Improving the health and well-being of McDowell County has been the goal of the YMCA and our partner agencies for over a year,” said Tim Blenco, executive director of the Corpening YMCA. “Initiatives such as Healthy Family Home and Youth Fit for Life are core curriculum components in all of our youth programs. Those efforts and others such as the Y Health Plan, Coach Approach, YMCA Healthy Kids Day, McDowell Hospital’s Lighten Up 4 Life, and the Health Department’s Eat Smart, Move More Program are designed to support and provide guidance to individuals and families who want to live healthier. Recently the community has taken several steps towards becoming a healthier place. This assessment will allow for future steps to be more targeted and strategic.”

The Community Healthy Living Index will allow them to take snapshots of neighborhoods across all sectors and put a plan in place to address gaps and take advantage of existing opportunities, according to Blenco. In addition, the assessment conducted in McDowell County will help create a picture of the larger community and identify what changes can be made on a larger scale, affecting more people.

CHLI is a component of Activate America — the national YMCA organization’s response to the country’s growing health crisis. The YMCA movement is redefining itself and engaging communities across the country to provide better opportunities for people of all ages in their pursuit of health and well-being in spirit, mind and body. Other tools exist that assess individual components of a healthy community, such as walkability assessments, school wellness assessments and worksite wellness assessments. CHLI is one of the first tools of its kind to allow leaders to simultaneously assess multiple sites in a community and get the full picture of how they as leaders are doing in supporting and advancing healthy environments for their residents.

Creating change at the policy level is an explicit goal of CHLI. Research has shown that policy approaches such as increasing access to and use of attractive and safe locations for engaging in physical activity, revising school food contracts to include more fruits and vegetables and whole-grain foods and requiring sidewalks and crossing signals in neighborhoods to make them more pedestrian friendly may be especially important in supporting healthy lifestyles. These changes benefit a greater number of people than programmatic approaches that aim to change individual behavior one person at a time.

Here are a few examples:

• ·  Studies show that people are less willing to walk in their neighborhoods when there is traffic congestion, noise and the threat of violence.
• · Communities that develop pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly infrastructure with links to destinations of interest have more physically active residents.
• · Evidence suggests that healthy, active children learn more effectively and achieve more academically.
• · Research has shown that accessibility to fruit and vegetables means more people will eat them.
• · A study has shown that obesity rates increase as the distance to grocery stores increases.

“The Corpening YMCA looks forward to joining with our local partners to learn how we can make the healthy choice the easy choice for our residents,” said Blenco.

The McDowell County CHLI pilot assessment will include the following locations:

Afterschool sites: Corpening Memorial YMCA and Glenwood Elementary Afterschool

School sites: McDowell High School, Marion and Old Fort elementary schools

Neighborhoods: West Marion, Eastfield, Pleasant Gardens and Garden Street

Work Sites: Baldor Electric and Coats North America.