Polk County FIT Challenge was identified by our Wellness Coalition as an action, that when combined with other actions in our community, that has a reasonable chance of making a difference in obesity levels in our community. This is an ongoing program in our community.

This is the third year that our community will focus on the Polk County FIT Challenge. This program has been extremely effective in encouraging community members to become active and live a healthy lifestyle. This year, we will focus on making the program simpler for community members to participate and propose strategies for them to stay active after the FIT Challenge is over. This program will also add nutritional education and guidance to accompany the active living component. The nutritional education and guidance will include a focus on raising awareness of local Farmers Markets' and the healthy options available. Increasing access and awareness to Farmers' Markets has been shown to have a positive impact on Physical Activity and Nutrition.

The priority populations for this program are seniors and youth, and the program aims to make a difference at the individual level. Implementation will take place in the community.

We hope this program will address the socioeconomic disparities associated with health. The FIT Challenge will provide free guidance for healthy eating and active living for all community members to address the poorer health outcomes that are often associated with lower socioeconomic population groups.

The partners for this program include:

Evaluation Plan:

We plan to evaluate the impact of the FIT Challenge through the use of Results-Based AccountabilityTM to monitor specific performance measures. We will be monitoring How Much, How Well and/or Better Off Performance Measures. Our evaluation activities will be tracked in the Work Plan table, above. 

Sustainability Plan:

The following is our sustainability plan for the FIT challenge: 

• Sustainability Component 1: Increase community awareness of event
  • By increasing our marketing efforts, we hope to increase awareness of the FIT challenge in the community to gain support for continuing the program in future years.
• Sustainability Component 2: Communicate and engage diverse community organizations.
  • We hope to improve participation within faith-based communities and schools to develop additional champions for the FIT Challenge. These champions will be able to communicate the value of this program to community leaders and potential funders.