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KARI ELLINGSTAD: Next slide please. Our work has also touched the child care sector.
We've held a couple of Healthy Sarasota County Child Care trainings; these are designed to
help staff and directors understand how they can incorporate healthy practices and policies
into their sites. Our local program and training aligns to the standards included in the Let's
Move Child Care initiative. To receive designation as a Healthy Sarasota
County Child Care site, each center has to submit and action plan which identifies policy
and environmental targets. Each site was also subject to a validation visit. We are able
to quantify how many sites earned this designation, and, but now we are interested in finding
out, learning a little bit more about how these policies and practices have been implemented
and whether they've stuck. We are about to send out a survey to all of
the sites that completed this training. And just last week we held a focus group with
another, with a group of sites that completed the training to see kind of where they were.
And, we were really encouraged by those discussions. We are also, we also had a big policy success
when our local early learning coalition added the training and designation to their rating
tool for child care centers. So this means that sites can get extra points for having
completed this training successfully. And that's really important for the sustainability
and credibility of that overall effort, so we're really proud of that win. Next slide,
please. In our school sector, we didn't start with
the school superintendent or leadership at the top. We had gone that route before and
had some push back. So we took a new tactic with this effort. We engaged the director
of the school nurses. In our county, school nurses are in every school, already charged
with conducting BMI assessments in grades 1, 3, 6 and 9, and many of those nurses are
very interested in doing more to address the obesity epidemic which confronts them every
day. When we engaged the nurses in this way, instead
of starting with the district leadership, we were working with folks on the ground,
and building a cadre of advocates. The nurses have used the healthy weight plan, they've
engaged principles, and they have been important partners in disseminating our 5210 message.
Once we had the school nurses on board we are able to get buy in from the food and nutrition
services staff who have also incorporated the message and included 5210 as a core part
of their curriculum when they do nutrition education.
When it comes to asking for district-wide policy change, which we hope to do, we feel
like we will be in a better position to compel our leaders to do the right thing because
of the movement we've created and our ability to show progress.
At this point, we're working with individual schools, and encouraging schools to earn distinction
as a HealthierUs School. This mechanism already encourages schools to adopt healthy policies
and practices. And we're proud to report that so far, 24 of our local elementary schools
have already earned this important distinction. Next slide, please.
And then worksites are a new area for us. Our worksite initiative is still evolving,
but we're looking forward to launching this in the next month or so. And our goal here,
like the child care intiaitive, is to create a recognition program which would promote
those employers who had been successful in adopting healthy policies and practices. Next
slide, please. We are also looking at opportunities at broader
policy changes in the community. We have long wanted to do something to improve access to
healthy foods. We recently held a food summit that helped us find focus and some policy
targets and we're looking forward to advance some of those things to address food access
issues particularly in our underserved communities. Next slide.
In all of these sectors it's really important to note that the individual strategies can
be scaled up with larger population level policy and environmental strategies. Here
from a tactical standpoint the messaging is really important. Messaging can be a hook
for securing partners that might be willing to adopt policy changes. Partners are often
willing to be a part of the effort to spread the message and if you can provide them with
materials to help spread the message, then later on you create an opportunity to have
a broader conversation about policy change. If it's a school principal that's really embraced
the message you can say well you know what else do you think you can do in your school
environment to support, to support this message. And it brings them along with you we have
found. It is really a great tool for building that partnership and having some of those
conversations. Once the policy change has been achieved,
it's important to realize that there are can still be some challenges. We had an issue
here in Sarasota County several years ago our Food Policy Council made some recommendations
to the Board of County Commissioners, most of which were accepted as policy amendments
to the Chapters for Environmental and Future Land Use. So that was exciting; however it
took years before any of those recommendations were actually implemented.
So it's important to remember that sometimes the policy has been adopted, but the steps
haven't been taken to fully implement or embed the change. And perhaps there might not be
the will, intention, or the resources to fully implement.
If we focus just on the fact that a policy has been adopted or passed, we may be thinking
we've made more progress than we actually have. The policy change may be necessary,
but isn't always sufficient to lead to improvements. So I would encourage you to think about the
steps required for successful implementation of policy change and not just the adoption
of a policy. Think about where you want to be when the policy is successfully implemented
and kind of work backwards. Embed key process measures into an overall measurement strategy
so you'll know you're making progress. The type of progress which will actually lead
to improvements. Be aware that there are many "little p" efforts
that should be tended to before you can make the leap to the "big P" of policy change.
And this really all depends on the context of your community and where your community is at now. You may
need to develop your partnerships, try out some processes and practices and programs, and
deal with the politics of change before your community is ready for that big policy change.
And, this may require some additional p's of patience and persistence. So, hang in there.
Next slide. We are certainly proud of the progress that
we've been able to make in Sarasota County. And as a team lead, I am thrilled that our
team is as committed as ever to our collaborative goals, and our partnerships are growing. If
you're interested in learning more about our efforts, please take a look at our website
HealthySarasota.com to find out more and I will be happy to answer any questions during
the discussion. Thank you.