Healthy-by-Default REACH Project: Impacting Minority Health with Policy, Systems and Environmental Changes to Improve Active Living and Healthy Eating in Norfolk, Virginia

The Healthy Norfolk Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) focused on making the healthy choice the easy choice to improve healthy eating and physical activity in Norfolk’s minority communities. Working with 10 churches  impacting over 7,000 people, one housing authority and a city government impacting over 200,000 people over 8 months, Healthy Norfolk assessed each site using the CDC CHANGE Tool, provided recommendations, assisted each site in creating an action plan and provided material resources and technical support for creating policy, systems and environmental changes. Each site received material goods, technical support and guidance to ensure sustainability of the policy and environmental changes. REACH assessed the community for walking/biking and healthy eating barriers and facilitators through a series of community dialogues to influence the implementation of the city’s bicycle and pedestrian master plan as part of the REACH project.  The project collaborated with the city’s health coalition, Healthy Norfolk, as a means to sustain the initiative. All sites demonstrated improvements in their CHANGE Tool scores pre and post intervention over the 8 month funded REACH project. Improvements for faith sites ranged from 4-15% for policy & environments for Physical Activity; from 1-36% for Nutrition; and, from 4-24% for Leadership.  Leadership engaged in the project and adopted sustainable interventions for policy and environments, such as Healthy Meeting Guidelines, Healthy Eating Policies and policies supporting increased physical activity.  Site Leaders committed to the project by following a Pathway to Success Cycle:  Assessment, Recommendations, Action Planning, Cost Analysis/Prioritizing, Intervention and Reassessment.