An 8 week program to showcase opportunities to purchase healthy foods and participate in fun physical activities wraps up.
This piece first appeared in The Vermont Standard.
For a decade, Monday through Friday, Jackie Fischer’s alarm clock buzzed at 6 AM, reminding her of a standing date. As school children and commuters in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia slogged down orange juice or wearily backed cars out of driveways, Fischer and her walking buddy Toni Leslie met for their morning constitutional, pacing through three miles or so before going separate ways. The two had worked on a community project together, and spent hours talking on the telephone. Eventually they decided to walk and talk instead, a combination they stuck with even after the project ended. When Fischer left West Virginia two years ago to assume the Executive Directorship of Ottauquechee Community Partnership (OCP) in Woodstock, she couldn’t bring along her walking partner, but she did bring her commitment to healthy living.
That’s largely the reason that OCP’s Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) Challenge has been so important to Fischer. The collaborative program to showcase the many, nearby opportunities to purchase fresh, nutritious foods and participate in fun physical activity kicked off in mid-August and reached its official conclusion on October 6.
“Healthy eating and active living is not complicated and just makes sense. But it does take a commitment to being responsible for one’s own health,” says Fischer. “Besides,” she adds, “it feels great! I’m always amazed by how good I feel during and after my morning walk.”
For Fischer, one of the highlights of the eight-week Challenge was the time she spent brainstorming with Ottauquechee Health Center physicians Steven Smith and Michael Kilcullen. The trio and their co-workers devoted particular attention to promoting walking, because it’s a relatively easy and inexpensive way to exercise. “It helps everything,” says Smith of brisk striding, and people who incorporate at least moderate physical activity into their routines “live longer, see fewer doctors, have shorter medications lists, and better self-reported quality of life.” Kilcullen agrees. The beneficial impacts of exercise on “maintaining normal weight, cardio-vascular fitness, and mental health are probably just the tip of the ice berg,” he says.
Fischer and the doctors worked on several walking-oriented ideas; one developed into “Walk Wednesdays,” a drop-in group that meets weekly for a noon-time walk. The striders who gather in front of the Health Center building at 32 Pleasant Street have lots of alternatives, in fact, they can choose from over thirty miles of possibilities. Woodstock village has an edge-to-edge system of sidewalks running past shops, cafes, and historic structures. Routes among them can be as short as a mile, or as long as several. The trails of Mount Peg Park lie less than a half mile to the south, and the vast network of hiking paths in the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park are easily accessible on foot also, just to the north. Faulkner Park, the gateway to the trails of Billings Park and Mount Tom’s South Peak, is a scant mile west.
On a recent September Wednesday, OCP Outreach Coordinator and regular Walk Wednesdays captain Jim Grossman asked fellow striders, “Where should we go today?” The assembly headed east on the Route 4 sidewalk, opting for a “tour” of an area long known as the “east end jungle,” and for tidbits of recent and erstwhile history from Grossman, a long-time Woodstock resident. The group doubled back past its starting point and added a brisk walk through the heart of the village before dispersing after half an hour, for work and other commitments. There is no regular route, says Grossman, where and how far participants walk depends upon the inclinations of those who turn up.
The walking group became a staple of the HEAL initiative, and will go on indefinitely, even though the “Challenge” that spawned it has concluded. Doctors Kilcullen and Smith will of course continue their efforts to get people walking, and will support Walk Wednesdays as well. Kilcullen will lead a walk on October 27, and Smith will take the helm on November 3. Walkers who join in can also meander into the Health Center’s waiting room for a minute or two to look over the “Wall of Walkers.” That’s a bulletin board established by the doctors for pictures and testimony that honor and inspire patients and staff who are regularly getting out and hoofing it.
Walk Wednesdays is only one of the legacies of the 2010 HEAL Challenge. Elementary school children are walking to school because of the “Walking School Bus” program. The kids are also experiencing healthy foods by growing, preparing, and tasting cucumbers, basil, squash and other greens and vegetables. Weekly Woodstock Market on the Green cooking demonstrations imparted a large body of knowledge about buying and preparing local foods. “It’s not new information for people,” Fischer says of the HEAL message, but “the more people hear about the importance of healthy eating and active living every day, the more a culture of health is being created.”
Through the weeks of the HEAL Challenge, six participants received a little bonus for their commitment to healthy eating and active living, and for their willingness to document their efforts. Alyssa Riviera, Emily Fitts, Polly Mahoney, Tyler Watson, Kachine Schaible, and Gabe Bango all won $10 gift certificates to the Market on the Green. Their HEAL Challenge entries were selected in weekly drawings from among all submissions. And Tyler Watson was the lucky winner of the grand prize, a $400 Start House Ski and Bike gift certificate. Congratulations to all HEAL Challenge winners and participants! Keep up the good work!
The HEAL Challenge was sponsored by the Ottauquechee Health Foundation, the Vermont Department of Health, Start House Ski and Bike, the Ottauquechee Health Center, Woodstock’s Market on the Green, and the Upper Valley Farm to School Network. For more information or to view a short video about the HEAL Challenge visit www.ocpvt.org