Getting Engaged

Getting Engaged

Unfamiliar faces sit around a table in Carlton County, Minnesota.  The faces belong to city planners, representatives from local reservations and tribes, and the county commissioner.  These residents of Carlton County, one of the seven counties in Northeast Minnesota's Arrowhead region, are taking part in one of several regional engagement meetings designed to bring a variety of people to the table to talk about active living. 

These engagement meetings are part of the Active Living Community Vision Assessment and Engagement Project, a program funded by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.  This program guides communities through a process that results in a clearly defined vision for active living and to provide a plan for rallying community support to implement that vision. The overarching aims are to develop skills within communities and to build long-term capacity to promote environments that encourage physical activity.  Active Living By Design partners with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota to provide technical assistance for program implementation.

The program is managed by the Arrowhead Regional Development Commission (ARDC), a multi-disciplinary planning and development organization whose jurisdiction encompasses the seven Northeast Minnesota counties.  ARDC reports that in 2004 Minnesota spent over $1.3 million on obesity-related expenditures.  Ellen Pillsbury of ARDC says the engagement meetings are a truly novel concept in a state where over half of the residents did not reach the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended level of physical activity in 2005.  "This region just hasn't talked about active living before now," she notes.  "We are getting folks around the table that normally don't come together."  And just in time.

In addition to bringing atypical partners together, the engagement meetings also garner discussion and gather input about the active living vision statement and principles created by ARDC for the region.  Following six meetings across the region, the resulting vision statement is: "The Arrowhead is a vibrant and healthy region where well-designed communities embrace and encourage physical activity for all people every day."  The six active living principles are:
1.    Communities plan, provide and maintain a safe, convenient, attractive and complete street network to access homes, worksites, schools, parks, and services.
2.    Communities consider the needs of all people during site and building design by prioritizing lighting, aesthetics, accessibility, and safety to encourage non-motorized travel.
3.    Community parks, trails, and other recreational and public facilities are accessible for all people.
4.    Communities encourage year-round physical activity by all people through appropriate maintenance of public infrastructure and facilities in all weather and seasons.
5.    Public and private community agencies collaborate to increase opportunities for routine physical activity during their every day operations.
6.    Physical activity is supported and promoted when communities host public events and celebrations.

The Active Living Community Vision Assessment and Engagement Project culminated with the creation of a toolkit.  The toolkit is intended to provide local communities and citizens with a range of strategies for incorporating the active living principles into day-to-day operations, procedures, and ultimately into comprehensive plans and zoning regulations.  The toolkit connects each of the above principles with related model policy statements, associated action items and implementation steps.  For example, model policies supporting the first principle include providing a complete local street network, concentrating critical services near homes, jobs and schools and connecting local destinations with walkways and trails.  The toolkits have been distributed to all communities in the region, and Pillsbury hopes these carefully-crafted documents resonate with the different ‘faces' around the table in each place. 

One success has already been reported.  A county official attending an engagement meeting took the vision and principles back to his township where they have already been passed as part of an active living resolution.  Building upon this early success, regional use of the toolkit will hopefully promote a range of broad community-level resolutions, serving as an important building block toward long-term policies.  These resolutions will help local communities take steps to create safe and convenient environments that will enable and encourage people to be more physically active on a day-to-day basis.  These "ultimate outcomes", as Pillsbury calls them, are the product of bringing together unfamiliar faces in Carlton County that will in time be more than familiar with each other as they create active living environments in their own communities.

Resources

• Arrowhead Regional Development Commission (www.ardc.org)
• Arrowhead Region Active Living Community Toolkit (pdf file)

•    Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (www.bluecrossmn.com)