Welcome to the East Tennessee 2 Step Healthy Weight Initiative website!
This initiative is coordinated by the East Tennessee Regional Health Office and the Knox County Health Department. Other partners include The Center for Physical Activity and Health and Department of Nutrition at The University of Tennessee, as well as many other community partners from throughout East Tennessee.
The East Tennessee 2 Step Healthy Weight Initiative is a unique effort that combines evidence-based recommendations to promote healthy weight with community wisdom about the practical application of these recommendations. It will take all of us working together to address today’s greatest public health challenge: overweight and obesity.
Our Vision
Knox County and East Tennessee communities will adopt effective and feasible nutrition and physical activity policies, practices and environments to promote healthy weight for all citizens.
Our Approach
Establish new and strengthen existing partnerships between academia, public health and the community to:
- Develop a set of recommendations to provide decision makers in East Tennessee communities with guidance to obtain resources, implement programs and influence policies to promote healthy weight practices.
- Support the ongoing implementation of healthy weight strategies and develop evaluation approaches to demonstrate what works.
Identifying “Best Practices”: Content Panel
- Individuals from the academic and practice communities with theoretical and technical expertise in nutrition and physical activity.
- Reviewed research literature to bring together in a meaningful way a “list” of what appear to be effective strategies for our communities to consider to achieve healthy weight.
- Potential strategies are organized within the broad categories of community, schools, work sites, and health care systems.
Community Engagement: Healthy Weight Summit
- Community leaders and stakeholders used their experience and insight to identify nutrition and physical activity strategies most likely to achieve the goal of a healthy weight in East Tennessee.
- At an October 12 Healthy Weight Summit, community members used the “list” of potential strategies from the Content Panel and their knowledge of East Tennesseans, existing programs and initiatives, and resources as a basis for these recommendations.
Sustaining the Initiative
- Community input from the Summit will be used to develop a final set of recommendations for release in January 2005.
- Summit participants will bring recommended strategies back to their communities for further input and local implementation.
- Public health will partner to provide facilitation, technical support and evaluation of efforts at the local level, and will continue to coordinate a regional initiative.
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