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Welcome to the Healthy Women Build Healthy
Communities Toolkit for Physical Activity and Healthy Eating! This
toolkit from the Bright Futures for Women’s Health and Wellness (BFWHW)
Initiative is for women who want to improve the health of their communities.
Women like you can take action to help people:
- Be more physically active
- Eat healthier
You can start by planning a physical activity or healthy
eating event for your community. You DO NOT need special
training to start a community activity. What you DO need is
enthusiasm and the drive to make a difference in your community.
The Healthy Women Build Healthy Communities Toolkit is meant
to be fun and useful. It will help you plan, carry out, and evaluate a physical
activity and/or healthy eating event. The toolkit provides 10 Building
Blocks—ideas and tools to help you. Each building block starts
with a question to get you thinking about the “who, what, when, where,
why, and how” of planning a community activity. You can read the toolkit
from front to back or one section at a time—however it best suits your
needs.
The toolkit also includes real-life stories from women who
took action in their communities to get people moving and eating healthier.
Join other women across the Nation to boost physical activity and healthy
eating in their communities! Then tell BFWHW about your activity, using the
form at the end of this toolkit. You CAN make a
difference!
Physical activity and healthy eating are important
because they:
- Promote good health
- Lower the risk for heart disease, high blood
pressure, certain types of cancer, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and osteoporosis
(bone loss)
- Help to control weight
- Give you energy and make you feel good
- Help to build healthy bones and keep them strong
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Success Story: Sisters in Motion
“I used to exchange clothes with my girlfriends at a
local program, and I found that a lot of my clothes were going to the ‘too
small’ pile. When I had to give up my favorite brown suit, I decided that
there would be no more giving away clothes that didn’t fit. Instead, it
was time to start an exercise plan. My friends and I borrowed a fun exercise
tape, cleared out the furniture in my living room a few times a week, and
started Sisters in Motion!
We had so much fun that we wanted to ask other women to
join us. So we came up with a program that was exciting and appealing. We
invited three good-looking, single men to teach us different kinds of exercise.
We got the okay from a local community clinic to hold a ‘Brothers Working
Bodies’ physical fitness class. We knew these men were popular in the
community, but we didn’t expect the response we got. People called, asking
about what exercise clothes to wear, and on the first day of class, 80 women
showed up!
We built a solid group with these women. Now we have all
sorts of programs to keep us healthy—a walking group; a monthly support
group; classes in vegetarian cooking (with no meat); and line, salsa, and belly
dancing. We also took on the Black Women for Wellness 100-day
challenge—walking 1 mile a day for 100 days.
To reach even more women, we found funding through Johnson
& Johnson’s Center for Excellence in Women’s Health. This helped
us grow into a more organized program.
When we started, the most important thing we did was to
focus on ourselves. We found our needs were the same as the community’s
needs. We planned activities to help make lasting changes in our lives, not
just quick fixes. We went from dealing with our own weight gain to a program of
health and well-being through physical fitness, healthy food, friendship, and
fun.”
Janette F., 40s—Los Angeles, California |
