Healthy Communities

Long Term Outcome:

Reduce incidence of preventable chronic disease throughout the region and increase access/availability to local food and opportunities for exercise.

Work Plan Tasks

Description	Deliverable	Timeframe
Determine potential partners for core working group in each county	Assemble Healthy Communities core working group	May - October 2012
Engage all Healthy Maine Partnerships, school coordinators, local food networks, other stakeholders in planning initiative	Convene meeting of healthy communities and local foods production stakeholders	May - October 2012
Inventory all existing and on-going healthy communities initiatives including needs, opportunities, threats	SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis performed	May - October 2012
Identify policy & investment needs to promote local food production/marketing/consumption; reduce substance abuse; promote opportunities for physical activity	Draft policies and investment needs to address healthy communities objectives	March, 2013
Maintainable database monitoring healthy communities activities, local food access, preventable disease incidence.	Creation of database and asset mapping	November, 2013
Development of website page with healthy communities information.	Website developed and marketed to all towns in the two county-region	October-November, 2013
Local (County/municipal/ school) adoption of healthy communities objectives	Each community invited to participate
Local foods workplan detail: Summarize, describe and post to gro-wa.org: benefits of local food (cost, economy, security, health); definitions, what, why, where, who, how	Web site content; pamphlet or card with QR code to drive users to site; Download general page (turned into pamphlet) as PDF	September- October- 2013
Assemble Local Foods contact list	Local Foods stakeholders contacted, informal informational interviews completed or scheduled and Healthy Communities added to stakeholders’ contacts.	September- October- 2013
Review/complete and conduct intern (2011) created surveys with producers and buying club managers; one-on-one or at a convened meeting	Survey results compiled	September- October- 2013
Review/complete and conduct intern (2011) created surveys with consumers; post to Survey Monkey, advertise using FB and Wash Cty networks	Survey results compiled	September- October- 2013
Coordinate with and describe all Washington County Local Foods organizers and inventory ongoing initiatives. (e.g. Farmers Markets, Buying Clubs, Food & Fuel Alliance, Farm to School Program, Washington County: One Community, Food Pantries, CSAs	Populate www.gro-wa.org with a comprehensive guide to Local Foods producers and consumers in Washington and Aroostook Counties in database; links, summary descriptions of ongoing initiatives for posting to gro-wa.org Photos, copy, links collected.	November, 2013
Identify gaps: policy to strengthen local foods production, distribution, marketing and consumption.	Description of current challenges and example solutions; municipal policy/regs to encourage local production; information and advertising re- value of local consumption; others as identified in surveys	October, 2012 - March, 2013
Implement investment and training solutions/actions/needs/challenges identified in producer surveys	Seminar for Local farmers re – pricing, accounting, other business training; small grant for farmers program; others as identified in surveys	winter, 2013
Create buying club software program (adapt open source software) that is available to all clubs in both counties	Buying club software; training seminar to use software	October, 2013 - January, 2013