Well-ahead louisiana's healthy communities program - objective: well-ahead louisiana's (WAL) project proposal addresses the need for interventions to improve nutrition and increase safe and accessible…

Well-ahead louisiana's healthy communities program - objective: well-ahead louisiana's (WAL) project proposal addresses the need for interventions to improve nutrition and increase safe and accessible physical activity opportunities that benefit the whole state by working on governmental public health systems to implement evidence-based strategies and to leverage resources from multiple stakeholders. Project proposal: WAL proposes expansion of the healthy communities program (WAL-HCP) to leverage resources, expand community partnerships, and implement evidence-based strategies to increase access to healthier foods, access to everyday destinations, breastfeeding continuity of care, and improve ECE standards related to nutrition, PA, breastfeeding, and increase farm to ECE initiatives at the state level and in identified target parishes. Target parishes for implementation of strategies include avoyelles, lincoln, morehouse, pointe coupee, rapides, red river, richland, ST. Landry, washington, webster. In addition, WAL will maintain and improve state-level systems for providing technical assistance (TA) and professional development (PD) for strategy implementation. Purpose: WAL will use the centers for disease control and prevention's (CDC) span grant to expand the work within WAL's healthy communities division (HCD) by building on the current nutrition, access to physical activity (PA), breastfeeding (BF), and ECE initiatives of WAL-HCP that are implemented statewide. Outcomes: during the funding cycle, WAL-HCP intends to achieve the following outcomes: 1) an increase in access to healthier foods statewide, 2) an increase in policies, plans, and community design changes to increase access to PA statewide, 3) an increase in access to programs that provide continuity of care for BF families statewide, and 4) an increase in ECE policies and activities that improve nutrition, PA, and BF standards, and farm to ECE (F2ECE) statewide. Evaluation: WAL-HCP will fund .5 FTE for the healthy communities evaluator (HCE) and .15 FTE for an epidemiologist. WAL-HCP and HCE will monitor and evaluate progress towards completion of activities and grant goals and objectives. WAL-HCP will provide the CDC with a comprehensive evaluation plan (EP) six months after funding is awarded. The EP will utilize both process and outcome evaluation techniques to fulfill the specified requirements for evaluation and PMS. The purpose of the process evaluation is to examine the extent to which WAL-HCP implements program activities, collaborates with stakeholders, and builds capacity to achieve strategic goals and objectives. Key personnel: key personnel from WAL include the bureau director, healthy communities division manager, healthy communities manager, nutrition coordinator, physical activity coordinator, early childhood manager, wellspot designation manager, community support specialist, healthy communities coordinator, healthy communities evaluator, epidemiologist, communications manager, nacdd public health americorps members (2) and health equity division manager.