Great Rivers February Newsletter

PWC and the RFRN partnered together to host “Mind Your Health for a Better You”: an in-person event at Valley Park where community members could come register for their free Fitness Journal to join our 6 month journey of Health and Wellness. We teamed with local professionals in the field of prevention, healthcare, and recreation to offer our community members a myriad of ‘Healthy Alternatives’, local resources, and training. The exhibitors included: CAMC Trauma Services (offering ‘fall prevention’ for seniors), Parents as Teachers, Help4WV, Marshall Health / Great Rivers Regional System for Addiction Care (offering Naloxone Training), Fun Fitness Kids Club, Putnam County Pedalers, Rivers to Ridges: Heritage Trail, Kanawha Watersports, and the Putnam County Paddle Cooperative. The RFRN and PWC displayed information about our programing involving ‘evidence based approaches’, and established resource tables to share information about The Arthritis Foundation, Try This West Virginia, Genesis 5k Running Program, and Mindfulness West Virginia/West Virginia Prevention Research Center. Areas of focus from these resources included: “Stress Reduction for Youth During COVID-19”, and an Assistant Coach from Genesis 5k Training Program has offered to team with other volunteers to form a FREE community walking group to begin in March, and be led by local graduates of the Genesis 5k Training Programs. PWC was able to showcase additional resources and equipment we've acquired for the focus on ‘Healthy Alternatives’ including sporting equipment for tennis, baseball, soccer, basketball, bicycle & batting helmets, and even stand up paddleboards along with the associated safety equipment such as personal flotation devices. PWC was able to invite youth in attendance to our Youth Advisory Board to expand the “youth voice” in our coalition, and sign them up for play-groups that we’re in the process of forming in the future. We also had over a dozen people sign up for our community walking groups, and note interest in additional activities such as kayaking, hiking and disc golfing too. We were able to help participants begin setting ‘Healthy Goals’ in their journals by first finding their ‘baseline measures’. The most popular baseline to measure became the 40 yard dash, which resulted in a fun competition for almost a dozen kids age 11 and under, who took turns running for time and then recording the results in the appropriate places in their journals. These baseline measures will be in place to refer to throughout the 6 month Health and Wellness Journey, and offer these participants the opportunity to measure all their baselines again at the end of the 6 months to review the progress and improvements they’ve made in their physical and mental health. This event on January 28^th represented the kick-off to our 6 month initiative, where we will form a sense of community and ongoing support on social media to help engage our community members every step of the way, and invite them to upcoming opportunities to re-gather in-person to take part in activities like the walking group and more. We were able to distribute 96 of the 100 fitness journals that we created, and conducted quality video interviews with each exhibitor to share online for all who couldn’t attend the event.