Choose Health Calhoun

Promoting a lifelong commitment to healthy eating and regular physical activity in Calhoun County by connecting community members with resources available and engaging individuals in their own wellness without duplicating any services already provided.

Choose Health Calhoun

Choose Health Calhoun 2015 Action Plan

Early Childhood

  1. Encourage good nutrition, physical activity and healthy weight for women before and during pregnancy. Specific Action: Connect employers, churches, etc. with educational materials, resources, and best practices. 
  2. Support Breastfeeding Efforts
    1. Encourage Breastfeeding for all mothers by supporting breastfeeding advocacy initiatives/groups.
      1. Define one goal for employers and churches with Choose Health Calhoun wellness programs to designate themselves as a breastfeeding friendly environment.
        1. Choose Health Calhoun will collaborate with the Breastfeeding Coalition of Calhoun County to define what a breastfeeding friendly environment is.
    2. Advocate for all Choose Health Calhoun community events to have a breastfeeding friendly area available.
  3. Collaborate with the Great Start Collaborative of Calhoun County to support healthy nutrition and regular physical activity for ages 0-5 years old.
    1. Be a catalyst for action by connecting educational programs about healthy lifestyles to families of infants from 0-5 years old. Specific Action: Use The Great Start Collaborative programming as the conduit to connect families of 0-5 years old to obesity prevention resources.
    2. Build a database of obesity prevention resources focused on healthy children 0-5 years old.
  4. Encourage healthy cultures within childcare settings.
    1. Connect childcare providers to education about practices, policies, and initiatives that promote healthy living during early childhood.
      1. Use national models as support tools.  Specific Action: Choose Health Calhoun is to determine what national models will be supported for implementation.   
  5. Engage at least one early childcare setting to develop wellness policies and practices for their organization.
    1. Serve as a resource and provide guidance to that organization in development and implementation of the wellness policies.

Measurables

  • Number of organizations contacted.
  • Number of organizations that have adopted a new policy of procedure.
  • Number of direct or indirect interactions with individuals.

Schools

  1. Promote healthy eating within the school by convening a Food Director Collaborative.
    1. Facilitate training sessions and meetings for area food directors to share ideas and overcome obstacles they may have.
  2. Promote healthy snacking not provided by Food Directors.Specific Action: Choose Health Calhoun will determine guidelines for defining healthy snacks. Choose Health Calhoun will approve a list of alternative options for sugary snacks on birthdays and holidays.
  3. Advocate for and support implementation of comprehensive school wellness policies.
    1. Assist schools with development and implementation of wellness policies by being a resource of information and best practice models.
    2. Initiate a minimum of 2 wellness teams within schools in Calhoun County.
    3. Increase students’ opportunities for and access to physical activity.
      1. Advocate for eliminating policies that take away recess for students as a punishment.
      2. Share and support no or low cost easy to adopt programs that promote physical activity (i.e. Feeling Good Mileage Club, Free2Play). Specific Action: Choose Health Calhoun will determine a list of physical activity programs they will support implementation of.
      3. Create a toolbox of activities and games that can be played indoors when weather does not permit outside play.
  4. Promote activity in before and after school programs.
    1. Create a toolbox of activities that can be adopted within an afterschool program.
    2. Connect programs with resources or providers in the community.
    3. Promote noncompetitive clubs to involve youth who are not involved in a school-sponsored sport (i.e. group sports, open gym, jump rope).
  5. Serve as a resource for safe routes to schools by promoting and providing guidance for organizations or individuals to create a safe environment for children to walk to and from school (i.e. walking school bus, parent patrol).
  6. Collaborate with schools to limit screen time or compliment screen time with activity immediately before or following within the school.

Measurables

  • Number of schools contacted.
  • Number of schools that have adopted a new policy of procedure.
  • Number of direct or indirect interactions with individuals.
  • Participation and frequency of Food Directors Collaborative.
  • Operation Fit Evaluation – Includes BMI, Pacer Test, Lifestyle Surveys.

Business/Employers

  1. Implement the Battle Creek Chamber of Commerce Worksite Wellness Network and evaluate the use of the program. Specific Action: Choose Health Calhoun will collaborate with the Chamber of Commerce to create the Worksite Wellness Taskforce that will develop the program over 6 meetings.
  2. Develop and implement 2 worksite wellness programs outside of the City of Battle Creek.
  3. Continue to expand the toolbox/database of resources.
  4. Create a toolbox of policies worksites can implement to improve wellness standards. Specific Action: Choose Health Calhoun will create a resource database of worksite wellness policies that can be implemented within a worksite.

Measurables

  • Number of organizations contacted.
  • Number of organizations that have adopted a new policy of procedure.
  • Number of direct or indirect interactions with individuals.

Physical Activity and Built Environment

  1. Be a catalyst for organizations and communities to implement policies or planning projects to increase opportunities for physical activity.
    1. Collaborate with the Battle Creek Bicycle Advisory Committee to promote a “bike-friendly” community and other efforts that may be consistent by supporting policy recommendations to the City Commission and City Staff.
  2. Support efforts to increase access and improvements to the physical environment (i.e., parks, bike lanes, and the Linear Trail) to increase use for recreation and natural play. Specific Action: Choose Health Calhoun will have representation in events similar to the Parks and Recreation survey of the community to support efforts that are consistent with Choose Health Calhoun’s objectives.
  3. Address safety or perceived safety concerns that become barriers for physical activity among communities by partnering with one of the following organizations.
    1. Bicycle Safety
    2. National Night Out
    3. Walking School Bus
    4. Local law enforcement
    5. Neighborhood Watch

Measurables

  • Promoting Active Communities Assessment.
  • Walkability Assessment – Produced by Walkable Urban Places
  • Number of community events directly or indirectly participated in.

Clinical

  1. Connect with Integrated Health Partners to increase awareness of obesity prevention measures for local physicians.
  2. Promote BMI or height and weight data collection/recording by physicians at every age to measure outcomes.
  3. Advocate for clinical interventions (i.e. prescriptions for exercise, obesity prevention education, patient self-management goals, and mental health screenings).

Measurables

  • Body mass index (BMI) rate per 1000 population for patients with a chronic condition
  • Depression screening rate per 1000 population for patients with a chronic condition
  • Self-management goal rate per 1000 population for patients with a chronic condition

Health Promotion/Public Education

  1. Collaborate with the Calhoun County Health Department or other possible providers to initiate health education programs specifically designed to reach individuals in communities experiencing high levels of obesity.
  2. Support programs that educate about preparing healthy meals on a limited budget.
  3. Build public support for environmental change through education.
  4. Connect organizations to create supportive environments and networks for healthy eating and physical activity.

Measurables

  • TBD

Food Systems

  1. Promote availability of affordable healthy food and beverages (i.e., "whole" food, minimally processed; no added sugar, dyes, preservatives or additives).
    1. Encourage employers, schools, and faith-based organizations to increase availability of healthy food and beverage choices within their organization. Specific Action: This will be addressed with organizations that are engaged with Choose Health Calhoun by helping them develop policies which support healthy food within the organization.
    2. Create a list of healthy nutrition policies for organizations to adopt.
    3. Support local food movements such as Good Food BC and their mission to promote healthy food choices through education, support of local producers, and creating access to good food for all people.

Measurables

  • Number of organizations that have adopted a new policy of procedure.
  • Number of direct or indirect interactions with individuals.

Health Equity

  1. Promote interventions that focus on communities experiencing disparities.
  2. Engage representatives of communities experiencing disparities such as VOCES, Urban League, Burma Center, Health Equity Alliance.
  3. Ensure Choose Health Calhoun interventions that reach a large population in the community do not widen health disparities.

Measurables

  • TBD

Choose Health Calhoun Affiliation

  1. Recruit and/or provide individuals opportunity to connect with Choose Health Calhoun to be engaged in Choose Health Calhoun goals and efforts. Specific Action: Have an open door policy for community members to attend Choose Health Calhoun meetings and if they are unable to attend stay connected by collecting their thoughts and sharing information from steering committee meetings.

Measurables

  • Meeting attendance.