On April 29th, 2024, MRT hosted an active transportation training for the current Building Communities for Better Health [BCBH] cohort. Here's what we covered during the training.
As part of a comprehensive multi-year project, the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services [MO DHSS] is coordinating efforts for select rural Missouri communities to receive technical assistance to reduce chronic disease risk factors through key areas of public health: physical activity and tobacco use prevention.
Missourians for Responsible Transportation and the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America [CADCA] are collaborating with MO DHSS to provide trainings and technical assistance to BCBH local public health agencies. CADCA is focused on the tobacco use prevention aspects of the project, and guides the local public health agencies through their coalition building process. To address the project's physical activity components, MRT led walk audits, attended community meetings and events, and orchestrated other technical assistance with our partner communities. Through this collaborative learning process, MRT is assisting local health-focused coalitions with adopting active transportation plans, which will establish the building blocks for long-term active transportation implementation in their communities.
Our training on April 29th, 2024 served as continuing education to ensure our BCBH partners have the tools necessary to improve rates of physical activity through active transportation enhancements in their communities.
Our training focused on key areas of the active transportation planning process, to ensure local public health agency partners have the tools they need to work with health coalitions in their communities. Here's what we covered during the training:
The local public health agencies involved with BCBH all face unique circumstances and are at various steps of the process to reach overall project goals. Although participating communities are scattered across the state, bringing us all together helps facilitate collaboration and discussion.
Our MRT partners, including BikeWalkKC's Michael Kelley and Tresa Carter and MRT's Taylor March laid a strong groundwork for the steps communities needed to take to develop active transportation plans. As local public health agencies have many pressing needs, we wanted to ensure they knew the steps to complete the process, and who to connect with to move active transportation planning efforts in their communities forward.
We also had further opportunity to share ideas over lunch at local restaurants in Moberly, suggested to us by the Randolph County Health Department.
As part of the training, we talked through the process for how to conduct community walk audits. Review our walk audit guide to learn more about how we utilize walk audits to identify active transportation opportunities in communities of all sizes:
With our walk audit guides in hand, we chose three active transportation corridors in Moberly to put our discussion into practice, and we split off into teams to identify active transportation challenges and opportunities:
Route 1: Gratz-Brown St.
Route 2: Sinnock Ave.
Route 3: N. Morley St.
After completing the walk audit exercise, we returned for a debrief with our full team. Participants shared their perspectives on the activities during the day, and we all discussed how best to invigorate efforts moving forward.
We were grateful to bring communities together from across the state to participate in this training--in particular the Randolph County Health Department for hosting our training--and we appreciate the participants for bringing so much energy to the event!
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