Final Healthy Hometown shows plenty of ideas have been brought to the table

A group of 15 to 20 Greenfield community leaders from various entities gathered for the final of three times last Thursday in the Greenfield City Hall meeting room to talk about finding ways to make Greenfield a healthier place through the program Healthy Hometown, Powered by Wellmark.

The meetings were on the third Thursday mornings of October, November and December. Tenets of Healthy Hometown’s Greenfield Community Master Plan were that end results of these meetings would work toward making Greenfield a community that eats well, moves more and feels better, giving residents easy access to doing those three things.

Jim Cushing, Community Health Manager with Wellmark, led last Thursday’s meeting.

“I’m really excited to see the leaders of Greenfield coming together to engage in Healthy Hometown, Powered by Wellmark,” Cushing said. “There has been some really great thought in

respect to thinking about where they want the community to be from a health and well-being perspective, really thinking about what’s great for the existing community but also what would the future be to bring people back to the community or to attract new people into the community.”

Healthy Hometown made one appearance earlier this year in Greenfield but the meeting wasn’t as effective as organizers hoped.

“We restrategized after that, cast a larger net and found a large group who we asked to be on a planning coalition, which sounds a little more interesting than just asking people to come check out Healthy Hometown,” said Stacie Hull, Chamber/Main Street Executive Director. “We set our three meeting dates up in advance so everybody knew what they were committing to. It’s been a very smooth process and they have it very streamlined. They even set up the meeting room for the meetings. With our busy schedules, it’s good to have the process where you can have ideas and you can make them happen.”

A few of the tactics the coalition had gathered up by their third meeting were starting a walking school bus to help students arrive at school safely while exercising, expanding the utilization of community-supported agriculture by developing community gardens or offering grab and go fruits and vegetables in the community, reviewing bicycle and walking policies in town, developing social networks for physical activity, increasing community spaces for social interaction and encouraging more volunteering in the community.

Amy DeVault, school nurse at Nodaway Valley, was encouraged by many of the ideas that were presented at the Healthy Hometown meetings. In her position as a school nurse, DeVault sees a need for some of the tactics Healthy Hometown may put into effect.

“Coming from the school’s perspective, we have kids who maybe don’t get enough exercise outside of school, maybe don’t get the right kinds of foods at home,” DeVault said. “I think it’s important for us to have resources for those kids that when they’re not at school they have access to healthy things out in their community so that on summer break or Christmas break they’re not just sitting in front of their iPad.”

“I think when you bring different people together from different areas in the community and you can brainstorm together you’re probably a lot more likely to be successful with the things you decide to move forward with,” DeVault said. “You then know you have the other people and kind of a social network who you can rely on to help brainstorm ideas to be able to accomplish some of the projects we want to do in our communities.”