YMCA leads the way to healthier communities
YMCAs are known for their ability to bring people together every day to generate solutions to challenges facing communities across the nation. The community development efforts of YMCAs over the years have initiated important community programming and activities, such as the YMCA’s commitment to parent-child programs, youth in government programs, day and summer camps, and child care and afterschool care.
Through its health and wellness programs, the YMCA is a major player in the health promotion and chronic disease prevention revolution that is saving lives, improving health, and reducing health care costs. Every day, YMCAs lead community efforts to build understanding and respect for others by mixing people of diverse ages, races, religion, abilities and incomes.
YMCA Activate America: Pioneering Healthier Communities™
YMCA of the USA launched a key component of Activate America in July 2004 – the Pioneering Healthier Communities (PHC) project. This community leadership initiative aims to (1) raise the visibility of lifestyle health issues in the national policy debate, and (2) encourage and support local communities in developing more effective strategies to promote healthy lifestyles. Since the launch, 46 communities have fielded teams to take on the challenge of improving the health of their communities and their residents.
Pioneering Healthier Communities teams are:
- Changing the environment of afterschool programs implemented by the YMCA and other community organizations so kids participate in physical activity and are offered healthy foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables and water;
- Influencing policy makers to put physical education back in schools and include physical activity in afterschool programs;
- Building new or enhancing existing walking/biking trails and sidewalks for residents to be active; and
- Providing opportunities for residents to purchase and consume fresh fruits and vegetables through community-gardens, farmers markets, and other activities.
Pioneering Healthier Communities is funded through an annual appropriation of $1.4 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Lessons Learned
Great strides have been made in the communities participating in PHC. The initiatives described in this report illustrate the advances that have been made in creating awareness, providing opportunities and removing barriers to healthier lifestyles. They may serve as models, and as inspiration, for future PHC teams and others committed to healthier communities.
- Learn more about Pioneering Healthier Communities
- See the Seven Patterns of a Healthy Community
- What does it mean to be a part of Pioneering Healthier Communities?
- What can participation in the Activate America: Pioneering Healthier Communities Conference and process do for communities?
1. Project builds on existing national efforts that promote healthy communities
There are three major national initiatives the YMCA Pioneering Healthier Communities project was modeled after. These projects have been underway for several years and provide resources to communities to enable them to encourage and support healthier living through innovative and effective community-based health promotion and disease prevention efforts. These three initiatives are: 1) Steps to a Healthier U.S. (funded by CDC), 2) Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (funded by CDC), and the 3) Active Living by Design program (funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation).
Approximately one thousand communities applied for these national grant programs, and only 95 were funded. Similarly, only one-fifth of PHC applicants have been able to be funded. The majority of applicants were approved but unfunded due to limited resources, not due to the quality of their application. The motivation and need in communities to become healthier is clearly greater than the ability of national efforts to respond. But regardless of the limited funding, communities are so desperate for change that they are prepared to undertake lengthy applications in hope of securing some level of resources to get things going locally.
A proven model to mobilizing “healthy communities”
In addition to these three national efforts, YMCA of the USA hopes to transform communities into healthy communities through a process that facilitates this change and embeds local practices that reinforce healthy lifestlyes. This healthy communities movement is not new and this process YMCA of the USA is undertaking is modeled after dialogues from hundreds of communities that have gone before us, which engaged individuals in diverse communities including rural, urban, multi-racial and professional. Led by the Health Research and Education Trust (HRET) of the American Hospital Association (AHA) and the Coalition for Healthier Cities and Communities, now known as the Association for Community Health Improvement (www.communityhlth.org), these dialogues stimulated action toward building healthier communities and articulated what characteristics improve both health and quality of life.
2. Seven patterns of a healthy community emerged from these discussions and are used as a basis for PHC.
Seven Patterns of a Healthy Community
- Practicing ongoing dialogue: Healthier communities have found that dialogue – engaging with fellow residents in order to build a shared understanding of what the community is, what it should become and how it will get there – is how the process of improving health and quality of life happens. Dialogue builds relationships among residents and provides the opportunity to generate a shared commitment to action.
- Generating leadership everywhere: Healthier communities recognize and support the leadership potential of all their members. They realize that leaders are found not only in positions of authority in government or business, but they are also found throughout the community. Healthier communities actively seek to cultivate new leaders, including youth and older adults. They have discovered that the most effective style of leadership involves facilitation and collaboration, and that building coalitions and partnerships are two of the most important responsibilities of leaders.
- Shaping its future: Healthier communities have the ability to shape their future based on a shared vision for the community. They are clear about where they want to go and realize that they have the control to get there. They understand that the built environment (e.g., a lack of sidewalks, parks and safe streets) and institutional policies (e.g., lack of worksite wellness programs or physical activity opportunities for youth) present barriers to healthy living. Healthy communities take steps to ensure the future they want.
- Embracing diversity: Healthier communities have realized that diversity, whether racial, ethnic, economic or age-specific, can be a source of tremendous vitality, strength and renewal. Embracing those who are different from oneself can be difficult, but the rewards are worth it.
- Knowing itself: Healthier communities know the value of information. They also know that for the purposes of improving health and quality of life, information needs to be collected and used in a new way. They have found they need to choose what to measure based on what is important to their community, and a focus on assets is more helpful than a focus on needs, and that outcomes are important – but that can take a long time to develop.
- Connecting people and resources: Healthier communities provide and connect residents with needed resources such as healthcare, parks and opportunities to participate in physical activity and places to walk safely. They know that an accessible, resource-rich environment leads to health and an improved quality of life.
- Creating a sense of community: Healthier communities have created a sense of whom and what they are. This understanding is based on a shared set of values and behavioral standards, neighborliness, an acknowledgement of interdependence and a commitment to the common good. A community’s sense of itself helps make it possible to act in the interest of all its members – improving health and quality of life. Institutions and organizations in the community understand that they have a vital community-building role.
- Community leaders – such as public health officials, mayors, city council members, state legislators, transportation and education officials, voluntary health/disease group partners, hospital executives, philanthropic foundation leaders, city managers and planners, presidents of local businesses, park and recreation directors, leaders from faith-based community organizations, professors and chairs of academic institutions, or executives of chambers of commerce – have an opportunity to collectively influence opportunities for their residents to be healthier through the planning and implementation of programs, policies, and projects that support healthy eating and physical activity.
- Approximately 10 leaders from each team attend the 2-day Pioneering Healthier Communities Conference and begin to choose a reasonable scope of work and geographic area to accomplish their activities.
- Eight months following the conference, after each team has had time to develop an action plan consisting of goals and associated activities (i.e., programs, policies, and projects), each team is eligible to apply for implementation funding, which is used to implement strategies identified by the team. On average, teams have been able to match this funding 2 to 1.
- After a team has completed a year of being a Pioneering Healthier Community, two members from their team are invited to participate in a Learning Institute, where they learn new strategies to increase the health of their communities and share amongst their peers accomplishments and challenges to date.
- Throughout participation in the Pioneering Healthier Communities initiative, teams will be provided technical assistance to make changes in their communities and will be exposed to national experts who can help guide their efforts.
4. What can participation in the Activate America: Pioneering Healthier Communities program do for communities?
It could help build healthy spirit, mind and body for all by:
- Enhancing the importance of healthy lifestyle;
- Building relationships within communities to target one of the leading health issues facing this country;
- Strengthening the capacity for coalition building in communities;
- Attracting a new set of volunteers to build a healthy community; and
- Helping further the community’s ability to promote policy and environmental changes that encourage and support healthy eating and physical activity, such as:
- Increasing the number of, access to and use of attractive and safe locations (safe streets and sidewalks, bike and walking trails, river walks, playgrounds, parks and recreation sites, schools etc) for engaging in physical activity;
- Developing supportive physical and cultural environments to complement and support individual and family efforts to make healthy decisions;
- Enlisting the support of organizations and settings to encourage and support healthy behavior (e.g., afterschool program, worksites, youth-serving organizations, families, faith-based organizations, senior centers and health care partners);
- Providing adequate physical education for all students throughout the school year and increasing opportunities for physical activity through recess, intramural activities and other offerings so there are opportunities before, during, and afterschool for physical activity;
- Implementing worksite wellness programs;
- Increasing healthy food choices in restaurants, grocery stores, worksites, schools, and other community settings;
- Increasing farmers markets, fresh fruits and vegetables, and community gardens for residents;
- Influencing policies such as the requirement of sidewalks and countdown cross signals in neighborhoods and the requirement of school foods contracts to include more fruits and vegetables and whole grain foods; and
- Reducing disparities in health and access to opportunities for physical activity and good nutrition in low-income communities.