Healthy, Active and Vibrant Community Toolkit from TrailNet

TrailNet has released a really excellent toolkit with resources for converting a community into more healthy, active, and vibrant place to live:

The Healthy, Active, & Vibrant Community Toolkit (PDF)

The Healthy, Active & Vibrant Community Toolkit is a resource to provide key community decision-makers with innovative ideas, policy suggestions, and resources that can be implemented to improve the health oftheir communities.

At its core, the Toolkit is focused on creating long-term solutions to address the obesity epidemic. However, we built on this core focus to provide you with a series of recommendations that go well beyond combating obesity and focus on creating communities that foster the highest quality of life and independence for residents young, old, and in between.

We believe that the following recommendations,if implemented in a way that is sensitive to the social and physical character and context of your community,will strengthen social bonds, increase sense of safety, help define your community’s identity, attract new local businesses, and of course, lead to healthier individuals.The Healthy,Active & Vibrant Community Toolkit consists of eight sets of recommendations that have been tailored to key decision-making individuals and institutions in an effort to provide recommendations that are highly actionable.

The obesity epidemic is a complex problem with many root causes that transcend traditional disciplines. As a result, public health studies are finding that the most effective interventions at creating lasting change are multi-component efforts that seek to address multiple pieces of the puzzle at the same time.

To reflect this, the recommendations were developed by a highly multi-disciplinary team that includes healthcare providers, urban planners, architects, green building professionals, public health researchers, dietitians,educators, community organizers, and bicycle and pedestrian advocates.

The recommendations are intended to lead to long-term, institutionalized change by focusing on solutions that address policies, environments,and social networks.

THE TOOLKIT INCLUDES RECOMMENDATIONS FOR:

• Schools, Childcare, and After-Care
• Community Residents
• Design Practitioners
• Faith-Based Organizations and Institutions
• Healthcare Providers
• Local Governments & Community Organizations
• State and Federal Governments
• Workplace

• Find out more about the Toolkit
   
• Download the Toolkit FREE from TrailNet (PDF file)

File: 

trailnet_toolkit1.pdf