Making it Better: Minnesota's Health Improvement Log

Minnesota Department of Health sent this bulletin at 10/04/2018 11:05 AM CDT

Making it Better: Minnesota's Health Improvement Log

View this as a webpage

Oct. 4, 2018

Walk to School Day

Join the walk on Oct. 10

Walk to School Day is almost here! Safe Routes to School hosts Walk to School Day on Oct. 10 to help promote community involvement with active transportation.

If your community hasn't registered their schools it's not too late - share the link to register and get the ball rolling!

Tools to promote Walk to School Day such as newsletter templates, social media posts, parent letters and fliers for schools and parents are available on the SRTS webpage.

Grant opportunity for playgrounds

Custom built playgrounds to benefit the community

KaBOOM! is a nonprofit that is dedicated to saving playtime for kids and provides eligible communities with funds, tools and resources to build a custom made playground. Nonprofits and other organizations that work with playground aged kids are eligible to apply. The application as well as a list of requirements for applicants once they are accepted are available on the KaBOOM! webpage.

This is a great opportunity for organizations looking to engage community members on a project that will benefit everyone in the community and provide a space for kids to play freely.

Applications are due Nov. 9 for early consideration.

October is Farm to School Month

Join the celebration!

Farm to School has taken off in the past few years and we've put together a few of the ways you can join in to celebrate its success this month.

Today, Oct. 4, is Minnesota Thursday with schools around the state featuring lunches made with locally sourced ingredients. Check out what's happening at your schools and post on social media with the hashtag #MNfarmtoschool.
Thursday, Oct. 11: Join the 5th Annual Great Lakes Great Apple Crunch along with many other schools around the state to promote locally grown apples with samples and activities. Register to join.
Lastly, visit the Farm to School page with the University of Minnesota for more details on Farm to School month and ways to get involved.

Social media content from CDC

CDC has provided sample social media content for October

If you need more social media content for this month, look no further! CDC has put out a wealth of content to use for topics such as nutrition, physical activity and obesity, which is available on Basecamp under communications and media.

CDC also has social media resources on breastfeeding, nutrition, physical activity and other topics in both English and Spanish. Visit the CDC website to access these tools.

Fall 2018 SHIP regional learning meetings

Send us your feedback

Have you attended one of the fall 2018 SHIP regional learning meetings? We want to get your feedback. Please complete the short evaluation; your feedback will help us better plan for upcoming trainings and technical assistance opportunities.

Calendar

Webinar: Winning Strategies to Engage Diverse Communities in Safe Routes to School

Date: Wednesday, Oct. 24
Time: 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.

Low-income communities and communities of color are more vulnerable to unsafe travel partly because of inequities in infrastructure and programming. By engaging diverse communities in Safe Routes to School, we can help change this! Register for this webinar with the Safe Routes to School National Partnership to learn about the importance and impact of community engagement with our SRTS programs.

This Week's Gem

As harvest season is upon us, it is great to see the gardens that contribute to students learning about healthy foods as well as agriculture. Howard Lake High School has had a particularly successful school-based agriculture project as part of its Future Farmers of America (FFA) chapter. With support from the Statewide Health Improvement Partnership (SHIP), the effort has expanded and continues to grow.

SHIP helped to fund the repurposing of a walk-in freezer that is now used as a large cooler to store garden produce. That storage allows students to use produce for Community Support Agriculture (CSA) shares and the local farmers market. The garden and extra produce also provide a perfect setting for students to learn about farming and business practices.

“Without the cooler, we wouldn’t be able to harvest our produce in a timely manner,” said Seena Glessing, FFA advisor, who pointed out a crop of radishes in the cooler that needed to be harvested the week before. They would otherwise be too large to go out in the next CSA boxes and would have been wasted.