Community assessment under way for Healthy Nevada project
By Rusty Murry
Nevada Daily Mail
The Healthy Nevada Project has taken another step forward, in the form of a community assessment being conducted by the Columbia, Mo.-based, not-for-profit organization PedNet Coalition.
Representatives of PedNet have been in town this week, driving around and talking to members of the community, the Healthy Nevada leadership board, area businesses and organizations.
The goal, according to field representative Mike Snyder, is to determine the city's strengths, weak points and potential. PedNet is going to create "a conceptual master plan of ideas" for improving the community's approach to health and wellness.
They plan to:
* Devise a bicycle and pedestrian master plan that inventories Nevada's existing bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, provides a summary of where infrastructure is lacking and where new infrastructure could be built, and presents a prioritized project list with cost estimates. Artists' renderings of what projects may look like would come later.
* Determine the community's accessibility to healthy foods, integrating the geographical locations of healthy food production, distribution and retail centers into a map for developing a plan for improving healthy food access and affordability.
* Create a plan to develop or extend healthy community policies aimed at increasing physical activity and healthy food consumption at the municipal level and through community programs.
PedNet's director of consulting services, Robert Johnson, said the finished project should be ready to present to Cerner by Dec. 1 -- possibly sooner.
Johnson said, "Nevada has a lot of advantages over many of the communities I've been to." The city is compact in the downtown area, a feature that lends itself well to foot and bike travel, Johnson said. He noted that the streets are in good shape, the city has a lot of sidewalks, the schools are all in residential neighborhoods and there is the willingness to work together that is needed in a project of this type.
The company was hired by Cerner Corp.; and Cerner executive Erik Gallimore said the partnership with PedNet is a great opportunity for the Healthy Nevada Project. He said PedNet will establish baseline data that will help the process along. He also noted that part of PedNet's goal is to see to it that the project gets "the most bang for the buck" from their assessment.
Gallimore likens the whole process to a recipe.
"We're going to be successful here," he said, "I just don't know what the recipe is."
Right now, they are in the process of identifying and gathering ingredients.
Gallimore and others at Cerner believe the work that PedNet is doing is an essential ingredient to the success of the project -- so much so that they were willing to make the investment of approximately $65,000 to have the survey done.
According to Healthy Nevada board member and community coordinator Dr. Tricia Bridgewater, the board voted unanimously to bring PedNet into the picture. "This is a fabulous start," Bridgewater said, "it's a shortcut for us."
She said the organization is "very thorough" and that "Cerner understood that PedNet could "come in and immediately see what we need to do," noting that because of the cost, "Nevada couldn't have gotten this done on their own."
Gallimore recognizes that cooperation is key to making the project a success. "We are working diligently to build a foundation for short- and long-term plans," he said. "We are trying to solicit input that will help make this a success."
Bridgewater is very pleased with the progress of the project so far; and she noted that there is a large group of people concerned with the health of the community and with making efforts to make it happen; and "We need others to come in and help us with these things."
She is convinced that "this will bring some drastic change to the community." Bridgewater thinks "healthy activities will become the social norm."