Active Living Program News
Active for Life™ Grantees Chosen
Our newest Active Living centers are the grantees of an exciting new grant project, Active for Life. This project is being funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who awarded almost $8.7 million, to be used over four years, to nine different sites. Active for Life is a four-year study testing the ability of two interventions to increase physical activity in sedentary adults over the age of 50. Active Living Every Day was chosen as one of the two interventions.
Five grantee organizations will be testing the effectiveness of Active Living Every Day. These organizations will all work with local partners to help their communities become more active. Each organization has developed a unique and creative plan for using the Active Living Every Day course to meet the needs of the populations they are serving.
We welcome the following new centers:
- The Active for Life Center of the National Capital Region of the Jewish Council for the Aging of Greater Washington will be offering Active Living Every Day to a diverse, multicultural population in Montgomery County, Maryland; Northern Virginia; and Washington, DC. Their program sites include senior centers, hospitals, a wellness center, a church, and active retirement residential communities. Center director Sharlene P. Hirsch, EdD, sees the Active Living Every Day curriculum as highly appropriate to the universal concerns of sedentary midlife and older adults who face the challenge of increasing their physical activity. Their long-range goal is to become a regional dissemination center for Active Living Every Day that will provide training to a broad range of organizations and institutions interested in adopting the program. The first site will begin offering Active Living Every Day on April 24.
- The OASIS Institute will begin offering the first of nine Active Living Every Day sessions on May 2. The sessions will be offered in St. Louis, Missouri; San Antonio, Texas; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Each location is working with their community partners to reach its target audience including OASIS members and underserved populations in each community. The OASIS Institute hopes to achieve additional outreach by offering Active Living Every Day to the employees of their various partners. Marcia Kerz, project director, says they also plan to introduce Active Living Every Day to the directors of all 26 OASIS locations at their annual conference in April. Eventually, they hope to incorporate Active Living Every Day into their Health Stages program at all locations.
- FirstHealth of the Carolinas is headquartered in rural Pinehurst, North Carolina. The community has a high concentration of retirees and underserved populations. As a comprehensive health care system, FirstHealth has fitness centers, high-tech equipment and numerous classes. According to project director Lisa Hartsock, the Active Living Every Day program will give participants, who currently do not utilize the facilities, the basic tools to incorporate physical activity into their lives. FirstHealth will offer their first class the third week of May in collaboration with a local church and their own volunteer department. Through their partnerships with churches, department of aging, recreation departments and chamber of commerce, FirstHealth plans to expand the classes to many areas in the region.
- Greater Detroit Area Health Council’s Active for Life project has partnerships with several area organizations. Their two main partners are the Detroit Area Agency on Aging and Detroit Medical Center/Wayne State University Community Health Institutes. Active Living Every Day will be offered through four different neighborhood communities. The communities will each offer two classes in 2003 and up to five classes each in 2004. These four communities, New Calvary Baptist Church, Northwest Neighborhood Empowerment Center, Cass Community Social Services, and Virginia Park Citizens Service Cooperation, along with their partners, represent community-based, faith-based, and senior-based organizations within Detroit. Karen Calhoun, project director, says that their efforts to increase awareness of the benefits of physical activity add leverage to and complement their Motown in Motion project, a physical activity initiative they sponsor in southeastern Michigan.
- Council on Aging of Southwestern Ohio is offering Active Living Every Day in partnership with the Hamilton County General Health District and Health Alliance. According to project director Stacy Wegley, this is the first time these three agencies have worked collectively to make an impact on inactivity among older adults. It is an ideal partnership among public health, the area Agency on Aging, and a hospital system as they work together to promote physical activity. This regional project covers five counties in southwestern Ohio, and it targets adults over age 50 in urban, rural and suburban settings. Their first classes will start at four different locations in Butler and Hamilton counties the first week of May. Classes will expand to the other three counties in years 2 - 4 of the Active for Life project.
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