Lewis County and various city staff members, local farmers, business owners, recreationalists and organization leaders recently met to discuss projects to help their communities benefit from healthy food options and easier access to recreation.
This is what Blue Zones Activate Lewis County — a health initiative of Southwest Washington-based CHOICE Regional Health Network — seeks to do.
Shawna Herriford, executive director of Blue Zones Activate Lewis County, hosted a pair of summits in mid-October for people to discuss ideas and get a feel for which projects would benefit county residents the most.
Blue Zones Activate is an international enterprise using evidence-based strategies and shared traits from the longest-lived people in communities around the world to make it easier for people to make healthy choices within their own communities.
After the groups discussed a variety of goals, Herriford said the next step is to finalize a plan of projects based on priorities and feasibility by January.
“The ideas that came through here, we’re going to vet them through one-on-one meetings with consultants about what’s feasible, resource-wise and time-wise, and then the steering committee will essentially have the final say,” Herriford said.
In January, there will be a kick-off event open to the public. Herriford said the location and date are yet to be determined, but she’s hoping to host it at Centralia College.
The first of the two summits revolved around helping Lewis County residents get easier access to healthy foods in order to change their diets and was held on Oct. 11 at the Centralia Train Depot in downtown Centralia. The second was in the same place on Oct. 19.
According to Herriford, among the bigger projects discussed included creating school gardening systems, such as the Toledo Learning Garden outside of Toledo Elementary School, allowing students not only easier access to healthier foods but educating them in agriculture and science.
“Another idea is maybe looking to develop and deploy a mobile cold-storage food delivery system to areas that don’t have as much access to fresh fruits and vegetables,” Herriford said.
She pointed to the example of Coastal Harvest in Grays Harbor, which operates a mobile market truck to serve those in remote rural communities.
Other ideas included implementing better student nutritional standards at schools, developing more community commercial kitchens and marketing local farms.
Those who attended the Oct. 11 meeting were able to take home free samples of vegetables grown at local farms including Till Next Time Farms, Skook River Farms, Raven’s Wind Farm, Alucinor Farms, Green Gardens Farm, Piece by Piece Farm and the Simpler Past Homestead.
The second of the two summits looked at roadways, sidewalks and bike lanes within Lewis County in order to make communities more walkable for residents.
“Nobody’s taking anyone’s car away or anything like that, it’s all about trying to say, ‘We’d like to give you the choice … to be able to walk, be able to bike if you want,’” said Chris Danley, Blue Zones National Built Environment policy expert.
Some of the ideas discussed during the Oct. 19 summit included converting one-way streets into two-way designs, establishing better support for street festivals throughout Lewis County, adopting complete street ordinances, installing more roundabouts to help control speeding better, encouraging community hubs and social gathering places, and establishing better sidewalks and trails to make communities more walkable.
Herriford encourages anyone who missed the summits with questions to contact her on the Blue Zones Activate Lewis County Facebook or by email at shawna@bluezones.com.
For more information, visit the Facebook page at https://bit.ly/3MO0zeL or visit https://www.bluezones.com/activate.
