BATON ROUGE, La (BRPROUD) ––– Recent data from the CDC shows at least 30% of Louisiana residents report getting no physical activity outside of work or school, so the LSU Ag Center is hoping to change that with their Healthy Communities Initiative.
Jessica Stroope, LSU AgCenter Healthy Communities physical activity specialist and research associate, says the initiative’s goal is “to increase access to what’s already the resources that are already in place.” She adds the needs of a community can be determined by asking questions like “can kids get to the park safely? Are parks welcoming places to be? Can people walk around their own hometown and get from the library to the school to the park?”
Those questions lead the team to work in a lot of rural areas. “Rural areas in Louisiana often tend to have even greater health disparities than many of our urban places. So there tends to be lower access to physical activity opportunities, lower access to healthy foods,” says Stroope.
While many of their projects focus on creating more opportunities for movement, some focus on improving access to healthy foods. “Sometimes we think of rural areas as, ‘oh, there are farms, there must be healthy foods, and people are playing outside.’ But often, there’s a lot of isolation. Grocery stores have more limited, fewer options. We have parishes with very limited parks, so the kids have fewer opportunities, adults have fewer opportunities,” says Stroope.
Stroope says their work is often funded with the help of grants, like the CDC HOP Grant, “we’re working with local communities to improve parks, add crosswalks, get playground equipment, help communities access different types of funding, not just through us, but how can they piecemeal together the improvements for their community.”
But when bringing in new equipment is not possible, they have a simple solution. “We’ve got all kinds of stencils,” says Stroope. It is also a low-cost way to encourage people to move more. “Some of them are more early literacy-focused. So like kids jumping from letter to letter to spell out their name, some of them are more adult-focused, like a demonstration of doing squats or lunges,” says Stroope.
Photo by Kimberlyn Jones, LSU AgCenter
While getting more physical activity can promote weight loss, Stroope says that is not the ultimate goal, “physical activity is almost a magic pill. It makes people healthier. It helps you sleep better, reduces many forms of cancer, reduces your risk for type two diabetes, lowers your risk for heart disease… We want just quality of life for people in Louisiana to be better.”
If you are interested in finding out how the Healthy Communities Initiative can impact your neighborhood, visit their website here.
