By Jessica Wright
Recognizing progress, building capacity and changing the narrative—these are the goals of the West Virginia Healthy People Healthy Places (WVHPHP) initiative, which strives to tell a new story in the state’s journey toward a healthier future.
In 2018, West Virginia hosted the Southern Obesity Summit, which brought together health leaders from across many states to foster collaboration, share ideas and inspire action to address obesity in the South. The fight for healthier citizens and communities requires creativity, collaboration, sustained effort and inspiration.
Coming out of the summit was an idea to recognize communities across the state that are implementing ideas and policies to improve their members’’ health, which gained momentum, and WVHPHP was born.
The vision of WVHPHP is to recognize and share the exemplary work happening in communities across the state as they implement policy, system and environmental changes. Many West Virginia communities are already leading the way, making real change happen to improve the state’s national health rankings by increasing fruit, vegetable and water consumption, empowering physical activity in the community and implementing comprehensive tobacco policies.
WVHPHP’s goal is to recognize good work that is going on in West Virginia communities that truly supports health as a social and cultural norm. In February 2020, during the annual West Virginia Association of Counties Conference in Charleston, seven communities were recognized with inaugural Healthy People Healthy Places designations.
Gold-level awardees were Greenbrier, Mingo and Wirt counties, the City of Martinsburg and the City of West Hamlin. Silver-level awardees were the City of Huntington and City of Wheeling. Two of the inaugural communities—Wheeling and Greenbrier County—became two of only 20 communities nationwide to be honored with participation in the Healthiest Cities and Counties Challenge. Both cited their WVHPHP recognitions as a factor contributing to this national recognition.
Despite the challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic, WVHPHP and the recognized communities have made positive progress in year two of the initiative. The next round of community applications is currently under review. Community recognitions for 2021will be announced during the upcoming legislative session. However, the program’s vision goes beyond recognition.
WVHPHP’s benchmarks evaluation aims to give communities valuable feedback on where they are succeeding, where they have gaps and where opportunities for key wins exist. The goal is to help communities of all sizes get valuable feedback on how they can become healthier places to live, learn, work and play. With improved quality of life and a healthier workforce, communities can become more attractive to citizens, visitors and businesses.
A policy, resource and ideas library is in the works, and spotlights of recognized communities can be found on the WVHPHP website. By connecting the dots and providing implementable inspiration, WVHPHP aims to help communities large and small build capacity and find success.
With these wins, West Virginia communities are rewriting the state’s health story.
About the Author
Jessica Gamponia Wright, R.N., MPH, CHES, has led the Division of Heath Promotion and Chronic Disease at the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health for the last 11 years. She has facilitated implementation of several synergistic projects that utilize different perspectives and categorical funding sources to better meet needs of state residents. She utilizes a team-based approach in addressing health in West Virginia and is anxious to contribute to leveraging health initiatives as a role in making economic impacts moving forward.
