Capitalizing on healthy lifestyles: Partnering with economic revival initiatives in West Virginia

The West Virginia University Prevention Research Center (PRC) has a long history of partnering with the state health department and communities toward preventing chronic disease. Forging partnerships between academic institutions, state offices, and communities is an effective way to maximize resources and impact with public health initiatives. The PRC recently joined an established partnership between the WV Bureau for Public Health's Office of Healthy Lifestyles (OHL) and several Main Street communities in WV. Main Street is an economic development program that strategically applies existing community resources to revitalize downtown and commercial community districts. The PRC evaluates OHL projects in these communities, which employ the social ecological model to combat obesity at multiple levels. The aims of this project were to increase healthy lifestyle knowledge and behavior through implementation of community-based nutrition and physical activity interventions, utilization of local resources, and enactment of community-level policy and environmental changes. Ongoing program monitoring and evaluation strengthens the implementation. Evaluation methods include administration of pre and post-intervention surveys, focus groups, and collection of program monitoring data. Findings from surveys and focus groups suggest success in community engagement and increased knowledge and healthy lifestyle behaviors. Through this collaboration, PRC involvement benefited community initiatives by providing evidence-based strategies and evaluation. This presentation will detail the unique nature of this partnership, describe innovative methods used in the healthy families' initiative, address limitations and successes, and provide guidance on how to assess and evaluate similar efforts.