A project to improve the health of people in rural areas of Tennessee includes gardens, walking trails, and opportunities to learn. University of Tennessee Extension coordinates well-connected communities in three counties, Grundy, Migs, and Pickett. On this edition of Agcast, the reach of a program that starts with identifying community resources and then improving on what you have. Hello, I'm Charles Denny.
This is Agcast, brought to you by the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture. A trail to learning and good health with each step, a story unfolds. On a bright summer morning, some youngsters are circling the new storybook trail and apart near the Migs County Fairgrounds in Decatur, Tennessee, reading along the way. It's a tale and a tour put together by a local coalition, including University of Tennessee Extension.
Meghan Brown is with UT Extension in Migs County. Our story is going to change out. Hopefully every month we have a list of free to use books. We started with a book that's kind of set to an Appalachian kind of poem.
It does some counting and has some animals involved. Something that bubbles up for us every time when we do like a needs assessment is obesity, exercise opportunities. Getting people out and moving. This is another opportunity for us to see if a parent wants to come walk, what are they going to do with their child or is their child going to be engaged?
That kind of thing is an activity they can do together and get some exercise and move around and get a moving. And when it comes to involvement, local FFA and 4-H youth largely made the storybook trail happen, both the placards and the idea, a learning and exercise option to help all ages. Chiropetty is a 4-H agent in Migs County. One of the things as a 4-H agent that I try to strive to have our students learn is leadership skills and how to serve our community.
And this has really given them the opportunity and they really dove right in and done a great job both leading and serving. They just have a passion for helping this community. Yeah, particularly helping people live healthier lives. Yes, absolutely.
Talk about that. The 4-H users, I would think that's a big thing for them. It is. Yeah.
One of the many things that we try to focus on is our health and how we can better our own health but also help others as well. And things like the storybook trail really provide that opportunity for youth and for adults in the community. You may have a parent with their child walking around the storybook trail and that helps you know both get some physical activity. Larry Mitchell is Director of UT Extension in Migs County and a firm believer in his community.
We're being in our office on working as a team but we're also being a part of the community and this community has such wonderful folks in it and everybody works together to try to help everyone else. And so it really makes a difference for what the extension office can be involved in as far as just being a part of the community. The trail is part of a bigger project with UT Extension called Well-Connected Communities. It's to engage local partnerships, identify needs and enhance area resources, all with the goal of healthier living for everyone here.
Kristen Johnson is with UT Extension Family and Consumer Science and coordinates Well-Connected Communities. What are some of the impacts you think you've had with the program? Yeah that's a great question. So I think that some of the impacts are that we have been able to work with partners even in small rural areas to really capitalize on the resources that are already available.
Natural space, partners who work closely together, close connections with community members to understand where the needs are and how we can take advantage of those resources to provide safe, accessible opportunities for community members. So in many of these counties we've been able to work with partners to provide community spaces where families can walk and where we can provide resources to help all community members safely access these opportunities to be active. Yeah so the University of Tennessee Well-Connected Communities initiative is really focused on building the capacity of our extension personnel across the state to work with community partners and to engage in interventions that address social determinants of health and that advance health equity across our communities. I think what we've seen is that extension has been a valuable partner and really shines through this initiative because we are so closely connected with community members and community partners so even in rural areas where there might not be as many resources we've really been able to connect and really initiate some projects that have meaningfully impacted the community.
A new native plant garden in Grundy County is also part of Well-Connected Communities. A number of local partners including one called Growing Roots are involved here producing both beautiful plants and flowers and healthy foods. One of the goal of this garden is to help individuals understand that they have food growing in their backyard. Here volunteers plant the garden and also put up small signage so someone passing by can learn what grows well here.
UT Extension leaders say they see value and civic pride in this effort. Jennifer Banks is with UT Extension in Grundy County. Yeah I think it has impacted Grundy County and having a coalition has helped pool some of the same people together so we're working with the Department of Health. We're able to work with 20 University.
We're also working with Growing Roots so it's allowed us to really work together as a coalition, identify needs in the community and then try to build in those environments as we see. So a lot of varieties of plants there you got the blueberry. Yeah we have the Habush Blueberry it's a native here to the area and so we really try to focus only on native plants in our native plant space. So we worked with Swining University Botany Department to help us identify those plants so I think we have up to 25 plants here that are native to the area.
And we're super excited about the Habush Blueberry because it also offers a little fruit and we can do some educational sessions around that. Jan Frishette is with the Tennessee Department of Health working in Grundy County. From research that we've done in community health assessments we have found that physical and activity and obesity are huge health problems in our region, region wide. Also mental health and substance misuse are always in the top four.
So this project is really going to help with a lot of these things. If we can build environments that encourage people to go out and enjoy nature I think we'll have a lot more physical activity a lot less obesity potentially. So the mental health benefits will be huge. Hours away to the north another county that's part of Well-Connected Communities, Pickett County, Tennessee along the Kentucky border and also part of the Rural Plateau Region.
Their walking trails are part of the project alongside community members and community partners, all to develop spaces that make health accessible for all. Amanda Woody is with UT Extension in Pickett County. I'm Amanda Woody. I'm in Pickett County which is in the Central Region and I'm the Family and Consumer Sciences Extension Agent.
In the area of Tinsip I work with Nutrition Education, Teaching classes at the Senior Center, at the school with the younger grades and just in the community. So we created a walking track a few years ago to give people a place outdoors to exercise as a family. We created this one in what used to be an old barking lot at the town of Arts Town now and we worked with them to create the walking track to be a family friendly place for exercise. Anyone can utilize it.
We do have a 4-H walking club that meets once a week to get together and walk as a group after school and they like to count the laps that they're walking and for every lap they get one bead to add to their keychain so they like to see who is earning the most beads. Whether we are gardening or walking and reading, this project has good intentions and solid future plans. If it's well connected, it's also well deserved. Thanks for listening, I'm Charles Denny.