Identifying Healthy Eating and Active Living Strategies

1
Identifying Healthy Eating and Active Living
Strategies for Implementation with the King
County Food and Fitness Initiative Sara Coulter,
Nutritional Sciences, Department of Epidemiology,
SPH, University of Washington coults_at_u.washington.
edu Site Supervisor Erin MacDougall PhD., Public
Health Seattle and King County
Background The King County Food and Fitness
Initiative (KCFFI) is one of nine community
coalitions in the country funded by the W.K.
Kellogg Foundation with the vision of Creating
vibrant communities that support access to
locally grown, healthy, affordable food and safe
and inviting places for physical activity and
playfor everyone. The work of KCFFI is focused
in the communities of Delridge and White Center.
As the initiative moved through
its two year planning phase it became evident
that little was known about the federal,
regional, state, county and neighborhood
strategies that promote healthy eating and active
living. Therefore, the issue that this project
addresses is the identification of strategies
that promote healthy eating and active living and
how they could be implemented in the focus
communities.

• Methods
• Conduct a review of scientific and lay literature
  to generate a list of potential strategies that
  promote healthy eating and active living
• Collaborate with policy analysis expert and
  supervisor to develop an analysis tool that
  community members could use to prioritize and
  sequence the list of potential strategies as
  appropriate for their community
• Once a week I discussed my progress, presented
  next steps and received feedback from the KCFFI
  Operations Team
• Because the list of potential strategies was so
  large, it was decided that the analysis tool
  would be a final step in the process and that a
  series of community surveys and a Leadership
  Council meeting would precede it. Conducting
  things in this order had the purpose of filtering
  the list of potential strategies to a more
  manageable number
• Each of the focus communities conducted their
  surveys in a manner deemed feasible by their lead
  organizations. The survey rankings were tabulated
  and then the Leadership Council met to filter the
  strategies once again. This smaller group of
  people reviewed all of the survey information and
  used that information to participate in a dot
  exercise where by each person received 10 dots
  and placed one or more by the strategies he/she
  reasoned to be most important for his/her
  community

Final Products Final products included a list of
potential strategies to promote healthy eating
and active living, a summary of community surveys
and the Leadership Councils dot exercise
results, and a strategy prioritization template
to be used in identifying the final set of
strategies for implementation. Conclusions Communi
ty based work is much more amorphous than I had
planned on! I quickly realized that the because
the research on healthy eating and active living
was so new, I would need to engage in a continual
interdisciplinary dialogue with health
professionals who had a greater depth of
experience than I. We all learned as we moved
along together. The project did not end with the
outcomes I was hoping for. I was hoping to
deliver a piece of work that would be immediately
useful for the Community Action Plan. However,
very little is known about how communities
prioritize healthy eating active living
strategies and the KCFFI communities were not
prepared to screen the strategies by the
prioritization tool that myself and two others
had prepared. As such, the survey took precedence
and the process of identifying strategies for
implementation was delayed. At the last
Operations Team meeting that I was able to attend
it sounded like they were still going to use the
prioritization tool but at a later date and
including less screening criteria.
A special thank you to the Delridge Neighborhood
Development Association, the White Center
Community Development Association, Washington
State University King County Extension staff and
Public Health Seattle and King County staff,
particularly Erin MacDougall who made this
project possible.