LJWorld.com

Topeka is hosting a two-day “Built Environment and the Outdoors Summit,” and I was given the opportunity to attend it along with about 200 others from across the state who care about health.

Here’s some food for thought:

The design of a community — where people live, work, learn and play — heavily influences their well-being. The built environment — whether it is conducive to walking and biking, provides plenty of opportunities to access fresh fruits and vegetables, has varied outdoor opportunities that include trail systems, and is safe — affects an individual’s ability to be active and eat healthy.

Many factors affect the built environment including policy, city planning, coalition work, zoning and citizen involvement.

The summit aims to help Kansans identify resources and address how to take action to promote physical activity for a healthy Kansas.

Thursday was Day 1.

First, I sat at a round table with others from the Lawrence community. Among those in the group were city planners, engineers, health department employees and a physical therapy business owner. We didn’t chose to sit together and ignore the folks from western Kansas; we were encouraged to sit together to begin networking.

We also were given the task to come up with a plan that we would like to see implemented in Lawrence. Then, we needed to figure out how to move forward with the plan. (Our idea will be presented at the end of the summit, but I am curious what you would like to see).

The keynote speaker was Mark Fenton, host of the PBS television series “America’s Walking” and a former member and coach of the U.S. national racewalking team. He is a transportation, planning and public health consultant. Fenton is a nationally-recognized expert on walking for well-being.

Fenton’s hourlong presentation covered the gamut. Among the topics: the health benefits of exercise, how to form a successful community coalition to get moving on health initiatives, how to implement pedestrian-friendly sidewalks, how to implement bicycle lanes, and the economic benefits of health initiatives. While these are broad topics, Fenton gave lots of examples and introduced the material in an interesting manner.

Fortunately for Lawrence, Fenton will be speaking on Tuesday, Oct. 6, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 N.H. Sara Snow, a green living expert, will join Fenton. The event is free and open to anyone.

During the summit, I also learned about two successful health programs in Kansas — Health & Wellness Coalition of Wichita, and Thrive Allen County. Dennis McKinney, state treasurer, talked about the rebuilding efforts in Greensburg.

I also learned about what goes into making a community bicycle-friendly. The presenters were Shoeb Uddin, city engineer in the City of Lawrence Public Works Department; Neil Holman, director of Parks and Recreation for the City of Shawnee; and Deb Ridgway, bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the City of Kansas City, Mo.

Look for future stories and blogs on these topics.

Now, I am ready for Day 2.

More than 40 people turned out for last Thursday evening's community meeting at the Holcom Park Recreation Center, and offered up a plethora of great ideas for improving the community's health. And at the end, says Marilyn Hull, who led off the meeting with some basic info about LiveWell's goals, several people offered their services:

--A licensed psychologist offered to share expertise in behavior change, emotional eating and the mind/body connection.

http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... After the meeting, people lined up to talk with Marilyn Hull.

--Two registered dietitians offered to share nutrition expertise and resources.

--An expert on recreation programs for people with disabilities is willing to advise on accessibility issues and help start programs for kids with physical disabilities.

-- A person who leads a workplace wellness program at her place of employment is willing to help others start programs.

http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e... People lingered to chat, then helped to put away the chairs, all of which had been occupied.

The meeting was tweeted out at #LJWhealth. For those of you who don't Twitter, here's a recap of the ideas:

--Extend the city's bike path.

--Add more walking trails around the river.

--Fitness clubs at schools.

--Yoga classes for kids and families.

--A resource center to find knowledgeable people to help structure after-school programs.

--Expand the "walking school bus" program.

--Because there's often a disconnect between what kids are taught at school and what they see in their families, figure out ways to include families.

--Because emotional and physical health are interconnected, focus on both, not just physical health. LiveWell Lawrence could become advocate for changes, and influence local governing bodies.

--Since advertising and marketing impact how we consume food, LiveWell could also do marketing, including LiveWell's own billboards.

--At the annual Thanksgiving run, create more runs for different ages of youth.

--Create more volunteer efforts for youth.

Next step: LiveWell director Marilyn Hull and Chip Blaser, who's executive director of Douglas County Community Foundation which is helping launch LiveWell, will sort out all the suggestions with other staff, and come up with a draft plan. They'll run it by the community and LiveWell's steering committee. We'll provide updates here.

LiveWell Lawrence began its campaign to motivate Lawrencians to create a healthier town with healthier people with a big bang -- the "World's Largest Community Workout" on July 8. After a larger-than-expected turnout at a community meeting last week, it's holding another one tonight.

Holcom Park Recreation Center -- 7 p.m. 2700 West 27th St. (27th and Lawrence)

Among the 35 people who showed up last week were one physician, a law enforcement officer in uniform, a school board member, State Sen. Marci Francisco (D-Lawrence), representatives from several nonprofit organizations, business owners, people from the political left and people from the political right. A varied group, says Marilyn Hull, the LiveWell Lawrence rep who put on the presentation. She and I chatted yesterday to provide all the info that's in this blog post. Shade Little, who's married to KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little was there, too. He's in the foreground here, while Marilyn's standing in the background. http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e...

I hear that it's unusual for such a varied group to agree on anything (I'm a newcomer to these parts....). But Marilyn says that everyone felt a need to work together as a community to improve our community health.

People came with ideas, most of which centered around:

-- Outdoor play for kids, and how to provide support systems for parents trying to get kids away from sitting activities (a big oxymoronish, but at least thumbs and some part of the mind are active in computer games).

-- Sustainable food, local foods, and promoting gardening, which also is a way to be physically active.

-- How to encourage the city and county to put bike lanes on the most heavily cycled roads. Here's a phrase that was used: Complete streets. It means streets that are designed for autos AND bicycles AND pedestrians AND transit.

-- Convincing people with lower incomes and those who haven't finished high school that good health isn't a luxury, but that it's accessible to everyone, and that you can eat healthy on a tight budget.

-- How to support walking school buses.

There were other ideas: Plant fruit trees on public property (wouldn't it be cool to take a walk at lunch and grab an apple off a tree?). Sponsor free dances. Encourage local restaurants to have healthy foods.

Marilyn says that she's gathering ideas so that LiveWell Lawrence can start figuring out what to do next. So, come on down tonight if you've got some good ideas, or if you want to get involved in this effort.

Just over half of us in Douglas County are obese. Marilyn Hull, executive director of LiveWell Lawrence pointed out that problem at a LiveWell meeting last night. To anyone who keeps up with news of any type, it's no mystery that obesity can lead to all types of health problems: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, back problems, knee problems...the list goes on.

The many solutions posed to reducing obesity include more exercise, better foods in schools, a community that's built to encourage walking, more education about eating right. And all those are important. But there's a group of people who are obese for which none of that makes much of a difference. To these people, being overweight is not a problem, it's a solution.

And fixing the obesity problem with diets, exercise programs, or advice about eating won't have any effect for this group of people. "Nutrition is a nice subject and has nothing to do with obesity," explains Dr. Vincent Felitti, a researcher who's part of the ACE Study (Adverse Childhood Experience study), a multi-year project by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente in San Diego. "Teaching people about nutrition is essentially predicated on the assumption that people get fat because they don't know any better."

By the ACE Study's estimate, there's a link between child abuse - physical, sexual and verbal - and obesity in at least 8 percent of the obese population. If there are 70 million obese Americans, as the CDC says, that means that more than five million obese people are likely to have suffered physical, sexual and/or verbal abuse during their childhoods.

Here's some math: About 115,000 people live in Douglas County. About 59,800 are obese. About 4,784 of those aren't like to be helped by the most-talked-about methods of reducing obesity. And, according to Felitti, these are likely to be the people that have the most intractable health issues, i.e., the ones that cost individuals and the community the most, economically and emotionally.

How can our HealthCommons project help these obese adults, and address issues that are difficult to talk about? How do we help children who are traumatized by emotional, physical and sexual abuse so that they don't engage in behaviors -- overeating, smoking, drinking too much alcohol, doing other drugs -- that hurt them? How do we make sure that we aren't inadvertently traumatizing them further in our schools or health care systems? How do we help parents and relatives of these children stop the emotional, physical and sexual abuse?

According to Health Care Access, there are at least 12,000 people in Douglas County who don't have health insurance. Health reporter Karrey Britt wrote about a few of the uninsured in March in "Faces of the uninsured." Some of you have put your stories here.

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Do you think it's a good idea for us at LJWorld.com to develop a map like this for the HealthCommons network that we're planning on putting together so that our community can get a better sense of how many of us don't have health insurance and how this is affecting our community?

And what about those of us who are under-insured? How do you think we should get a better handle on that?

We’re developing a new approach to reporting about health in Douglas County.

It’s different from the way journalists usually report about health.

First, it’s a Web-based network in which Douglas County residents who are involved and interested in health -- health care providers, people who use health services, businesses that provide products and services, social service agencies, religious organizations, state and local agencies -- are the visual and functional engine.

In other words, we’re putting together a collaborative network where we have conversations.

Second, we’ve got a goal -- to improve our community’s health. Journalists don’t define those goals -- the community does. Our role is to help our community reach those goals, to examine the consequences of those goals, or, in some cases, look at what happens if we don’t make goals.

Health is a personal issue. Each of us makes an individual decision to exercise enough, eat right, choose a lifestyle that ensures a good chance at a long and healthy life, get regular checkups from a physician or dentist.

But health is also a local issue. Do we have enough clinics to serve everyone who needs medical help? Do we have enough dentists? Have we chosen the best approaches to deal with difficult issues such as family or dating violence? Are our school and health systems inadvertently further traumatizing children who are suffering from trauma?

These problems can only be solved if we gather the best ideas and provide the best information to come up with solutions.

So, we’re creating a place for members of our community to talk about issues, to form groups to solve problems, to set goals, and to follow through with those goals.

We all know that too many people in our community are grappling with difficult issues: no health insurance. Not enough health insurance. An epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers and young adults. Adults with chronic diseases that arise from obesity or smoking or drinking too much alcohol or working too much. Too many people suffering from depression.

At the same time, a lot of people are participating in healthy activities: planting gardens, buying food grown locally, starting organic farms, biking to work and exercising every day with Don “Red Dog” Gardner. http://media.lawrence.com/img/blogs/e...

To start off, we’re thinking about focusing on four areas that affect much of the Douglas County community:

1. The thousands of people who are uninsured and under-insured, and how health care reform will affect them. Health reporter Karrey Britt wrote about a few of the uninsured in March in "Faces of the uninsured."

2. Violence among people who are related or who know each other. Most people think of this only as a crime issue, and, no doubt, this makes up most of what results as violent crime in Douglas County. But violence has been a public health issue for a couple of decades, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and to prevent it, we need to have a different conversation about it.

3. Wellness -- Much of chronic disease results from lifestyle issues -- overeating, drinking too much alcohol, smoking, not exercising enough, indulging in too much fast food. So, how do we encourage, support each other and make it easier to live healthy?

4. Local food and nutrition -- A big part of being healthy is food. You are what you eat isn’t just an idle phrase. The food that we as a community rely on also affects our environmental health, including air and water pollution and the health of our soil. How do we reach a healthy balance?

Our role as journalists is to help facilitate the conversation, to check the facts, to help our community come up with solutions, to remind the community when the stated goals haven’t been met, to provide information about the consequences of the goals that are set, as well as to celebrate when we’ve solved a problem. In other words, our role is to serve the community.

To achieve this, we’ll do solution-oriented instead of conflict-oriented reporting, be knowledgeable and involved, follow an issue through to its logical conclusion and provide context in the form of databases, useful resources, and backgrounders. We’ll correct our mistakes, answer questions, and create a safe place for everyone to talk.

We think this approach will help all of us in the community solve our problems more quickly, and to engage more members of the community while doing so.

The folks working on this from the World Company include Tony Berg, Brett Wright and Alice Brewer from advertising. Ben Smith from advertising and social media. Our Web and mobile wizards David Ryan, Christian Metts, Ben Turner, Eric Holscher and Charlie Leifer. Maria Preston-Cargill and Monica Taylor from marketing. Dennis Anderson, Caroline Trowbridge and Karrey Britt from the Lawrence Journal-World and LJWorld.com. Cody Howard from 6News and Denise Eck from KTKA in Topeka. John Taylor, editor of the Shawnee Dispatch and group editor for our other weeklies. Bert Hull from our magazine division. Jonathan Kealing, our LJWorld.com online editor. Ralph Gage, director of special projects, and Al Bonner, World Company general manager.

Our goal is to launch HealthCommons -- that’s what we’re calling it now -- in November. I don’t know if we’ll make it, but we’ll do our best. Each of us is starting to talk with people and organizations in Douglas County. We’ll be blogging here about what we find out, and about how we’re progressing. We want to be as open and transparent as possible about the development of HealthCommons. If you’d like to hear more, if you’ve got ideas, or if you want to become involved, contact us.

Thank you.

Jane Stevens

Director of Online Strategies.