Public health honored for exercise promotion

The Washington County Board of Health received an award at the Iowa Governor?s Conference on Public Health for Excellence in Physical Activity Wednesday in Ames. The board of health won the honor for its obesity prevention task force, which has assisted three towns in the county in promoting walking and biking to school. The Iowa Department of Public Health?s bureau of nutrition and health promotion selected the Washington County Board of Health for the award.

Washington County Public Health has been at the forefront of helping Kalona, Washington and Wellman complete the I-WALK (Iowans Walking and Logistics Kit) program, which identifies parts of town that are impediments to walking or biking. Kalona was the first town in the county to complete the process and has secured a Department of Transportation Safe Routes to School grant for $141,000. The grant will pay for five sections of sidewalk in town as well as fund exercise programs at school.

Four employees of Washington County Public Health attended the conference, and they were Edie Nebel, Chrystal Woller, Carol Detweiler and Lynn Fisher. Fisher is a public health nurse and said she was very glad to receive the award.

?We?re very excited to have been recognized for our hard work,? Fisher said.

Fisher said that the Iowa Department of Public Health chooses towns to complete the I-WALK studies. Fisher said it makes its decision based on the town?s readiness to complete the study, and Kalona was ready and willing to do the work.

?We had a great experience with Kalona in 2011,? Fisher said. ?We?ve had people coming to us from all different communities to ask us about I-WALK. We?ve even had requests from outside the county, which we weren?t able to do since we only serve Washington County.?

In 2011, Washington County Public Health partnered with the state public health department and Iowa State University to research sidewalks in Kalona. That group of organizations did the same thing with Washington and Wellman earlier this year. Each community was attempting to secure a federal grant through the Department of Transportation.

In each case, volunteers were given iPhones with Global Positioning System (GPS) software and asked to walk paths leading to the schools. They indicated any obstacles on their iPhones. The location of those obstacles could be viewed on an electronic map that all of the volunteers were feeding information to. The volunteers marked whether there were sidewalks on both sides of the street, on just one side or no sidewalks at all. They marked things they saw such as large truck traffic in the neighborhood and cars blocking the way, as well as positive things such as crosswalks, crossing guards and bike racks.

Fisher said she received a lot of interest in I-WALK from people in Wellman and Washington after Kalona?s experience with the program.

?Washington County Deputy Nathan Schmuecker came to me and said we needed to work with Wellman on the same project,? she said. ?He said, ?Wellman has got to be next.??

Wellman faces a similar problem to Kalona in that Highway 22 cuts the town in two, meaning that kids on one side of the highway have to cross a busy street to arrive at their school on the other side.

Fisher said that I-WALK is not all about building infrastructure. It?s also about educating children about the benefits of exercise and encouraging them to be more active. Kalona Elementary had a day last October that it dubbed ?Walk to School Day? and encouraged all students to walk to school that day. Even kids who rode the bus were dropped off several blocks from school so that they, too, could get some exercise before class.

Schools in Iowa are trying to reverse a trend            of children relying more on automobiles for transportation. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 42 percent of students in the country walked or biked to school in 1969. Just over 30 years later in 2001, that number had fallen to 16 percent.

?We are aware from the data that we?re starting to have a problem with overweight or obese students in our county,? Fisher said. ?We want to help our students become healthier, and one way is walking and biking to school.?

Fisher said public health would like to have a bike rodeo at Kalona Elementary where kids will learn how to ride bikes safely and learn bike signals. All the students would also receive a free bicycle helmet.