DNPAO Seminar Series Creating Activity-Friendly Communities Strategies and Successes from the Active People, Healthy Nation? Walkability Action Institute-Meeting Recording
April 30, 2026, 6:00PM
58m 37s

Mugavero, Kristy (CDC/NCCDPHP/DNPAO)   
So thank you all for joining today.
I'd like to welcome you all to our seminar today titled creating Activity, Friendly Communities, Strategies and Successes from the Active People, Healthy Nation, Walkability, Action Institutes or Wai. This seminar will focus on what we've learned over more than a decade of walking action institutes and how that Lear.
Is translating into action and impact on the ground in communities.
Please next time please.
Before we begin, I'd like to quickly cover our disclosure information in line with the continuing education requirements. All presenters have reported no relevant financial relationships. This presentation does not include off label or investigational product discussion and no financial support was received.
CDC complies with applicable federal civil rights laws.
More information is available in the link on this slide.
Next slide.
Please.
I'm super happy to note that this DNPAO seminar series is now accredited and we are excited to be able to offer continuing education credits starting with today's seminar, CDC has jointly accredited by the Council for Continuing Medical Education, the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education and the American N.
Credentialing center and there's a variety of continuing education credits available.
To provide these for healthcare teams.
And other practitioners, we will be providing additional information at the end of the seminar regarding how to get continuing education credits. In addition, you'll receive an e-mail with instructions to receive credit for the session.
After the session is complete and next I would like to introduce our presenters. We are so fortunate to have.
Some presenters today who have a lot of experience with a Walking action institute.
And so, first I'd like to introduce Karma Edwards, who's a physical activity, subject matter expertise with the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors.
She's led and managed the Walkability Action Institute project for the past 12 years.
Reese Brewer is the director of Frontier Metropolitan Planning organization in Western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma, currently reserves as a board member for the University of Arkansas Maritime Research and Transportation Center.
And has acted as a member of the Transportation Research Board's various freight communities.
Rhys also serves as a National Executive Board member for the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations.
Katie Riley is the physical activity and nutrition unit manager in the state of Alaska's Department of Health Division of Public Health, within the section of Chronic Disease Prevention and health promotion. In this role, Katie Overseas all aspects of the state's physical activity and nutrition program.
Aimed at reducing obesity related disease and death from diabetes, heart disease, stroke, cancers and other health problems linked to a lack of physical activity and poor nutrition.
And Joy Sims serves as the physical Activity Coordination coordinator for well ahead Louisiana at the Louisiana Department of Health, where she leads statewide efforts to increase opportunities for physical activity by advancing community design strategies that support safe, accessible, and physically active travels. Everyday destinations such as schools par.
And local businesses.
And there will be a slide now that just goes quickly over the agenda.
So you can see what we have for you today. And with that I will pass it on to Karma.
Thank you.

Karma Edwards   
Alright. Thank you, Kristy. Thank you.
CDC.
It's a pleasure to be with everybody.
Go ahead and go to the next slide please.
So my name is Carma Edwards.
I am a physical activity subject matter expert with the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors, or NACD for short.
I've really had the I think sometimes the best job in the world I've got to lead the Walkability Action Institute project or what we call the Wai.
For a number of years with some of my really good friends, this has been possible with continued CDC support and guidance and financial support along the way.
NACDD as well as a good friend of mine, Mark Fenton, and our course faculty and all the many participants that we've been with.
This has been a total team effort. If you're not familiar with the Walkability Action Institute, it's my joy to talk to you about it.
I am like a little kid in a candy store.
Anytime that I get to talk about this project, how I feel about it, how passionate I am about it and the types of change and impact that it can lead in States and communities across the country.
The project is built around a team model, particularly an interdisciplinary team model.
We bring teams together that are comprised of public health planning, transportation and elected officials, and we allow teams to bring additional folks representing other disciplines.
As well.
And we also bring national experts to the project to the course we call those the course faculty in those faculty members also represent each of those interdisciplinary areas from the national level, and these teams come together and learn over a multi-day approach. Sometimes it's virtual.
It's in person and they learn from these national experts and from experts in their state, and they develop unified team action plans that consist of strategies to help people develop activity friendly communities.
We do that through policy systems and environmental change. If you're familiar with that, that is, that's really how we're working on strategies in public health.
We do a number of learning methods during the course to help people learn. Some of those are.
Traditional some of those are outside the box.
We do a lot of lectures.
Where we do indoor outdoor learning, we do.
Rapid roundtables.
We'll do discipline roundtables.
We really want people to come to this course and it be more than a course to them.
We want this to change them as people and to move them in a different way and change how they forever see the environments with which they live and how they navigate to get to places that they need.
Once they attend our course, we offer an ongoing national Wai alumni network.
Where they can stay connected with folks who have come through the course. We really wanted to build a national movement with this and anybody who comes through the course then gets to join that national movement where they can come together and share and learn and network and even.
Troubleshoot some of the things that they're implementing with regards to community and transportation, design, walkability, and moveability.
We have 3 course models that we offer that have morphed over time.
We're now in our 12th year of the project and the project has changed some. Though we like to think we've done a great job sticking to the fidelity of the model.
We have a fully in person model.
We have a fully virtual model and then we also have a hybrid model that consists of both virtual and in person.
Next slide.
Over the last 11 years prior to this 12th year that we're currently in, we have worked with 112 interdisciplinary teams from 34 States and two island locations. One out of the United States Virgin Islands and one all the way out in the Commonwealth of.
The Northern Mariana Islands and collectively, our locations have voluntarily self-reported. A number of outcomes.
This data you see on the left side of the screen is going to be updated.
This year, but right now we're over 1400 macro level policy system or change outcomes such as things like safe routes to school complete streets.
Those outcomes have reached more than 60 million people in those 34 States and island territories, and the thing that gets me most excited is this next piece of data where we really do not give grant money at times. We give travel stipends.
Sometimes we gave really tiny mini rants or sometimes states gave tiny mini grants.
But these communities have collectively leveraged more than $540 million to go out and do this great work in their locations.
And that gets us most excited about what this course has the opportunity to yield in terms of helping folks understand how to work together and how to become grant ready next.
And so over the over the years, we've really developed as we continue to change the model, we know that we want the Wai regardless of which course or which model is used to be a catalyst for change in local communities, regions and states all over our country and.
We've developed what we think are some really critical lessons learned and secret sources to the success of this project, if you will.
And the first is that interdisciplinary team component.
We do believe that everyone has a has a say and a stake and really a share and how there's their community should be designed, how people move about them, not just to get what they need in order to survive, but also to thrive.
We believe that policy system, environmental change, those changes are more impactful, more sustainable over the long term. We think that has the ability to shape our communities and their systems with which we live and work.
And play and pray and receive care.
We also think this has to be done for all people and not just some of us.
We think that, you know, we really work hard to stretch how people view and define the word all in their locations, in their communities and in their states. And this really is a project for the people, as you'll hear, as we move on. The other thing that.
We understand is not everybody cares about health as much as I do or as much as my faculty or as much as us in public health do.
The health is now also economic.
There is a such thing as economic health, social connection, social, health and vibrancy of communities and those communities that are more walkable and movable really do show people who are more healthier places that are more socially and economically vibrant and connected. And the best part about this project.
Is no matter where a location or where a state is.
This course is designed to meet.
Them where they are and to help them, you know, move just a little bit closer to understanding not just the way of why this is important, but to the how of how we actually make these changes on the ground. And we understand that that looks different for every.
And so we feel really good that this model can actually help people, no matter where you are, whether you're an individual or whether you're a team.
And we saw that this week.
We just got back from Iowa late last night.
And we actually see this at work. And so, we feel really, really good about this model as being a catalyst for change. Next slide.
And so to that end, you're going to hear about one of the alumni who has participated in our model, who has gone from a participant to someone who's experienced a lot of success for the Wai was a catalyst for their change.
Now she's part of our faculty team and in my opinion, she's one of the best national champions that we have.
I'm going to turn it over to Reese for.

Reese Brewer 
Thank you so much, Karma, and thank you, CDC and everyone here today.
I really appreciate the opportunity.
Next slide please.
Just want to give you a brief agenda, kind of how we started.
What that growth was? Who helped teach us some of the triumphs and then our inspiration and of course, huge thanks to Karma and her team, and Mark Fenton and Phil bores.
On guiding us and helping grow us into.
The faculty that we are, and we're always continuing to learn, so I really appreciate that. Next slide please.
So just to tell you a bit about my background, I spent 30 years in Alaska, so I'm really excited to hear what Katie has to say about her project in Alaska.
I was with a redevelopment authority in the interior, worked for an MPO in Anchorage, and then became the director down here.
And a result of all this work that we've done, we've won quite a few awards just from the impetus and the catalyst of the Walkability Action Institute from National Regional Transportation awards to some international awards, along with Association of Metropolitan Planning Organization Award and an FHWA 2020.
Two environmental award.
And some NRPA national recreation and Parks association, so to say that.
Wai left a legacy.
It has and I can't believe that I'm a faculty member.
It blows my mind.
I didn't realize that opportunity was there for me. So next slide please.
So in the Fort Smith region, we are in Middle South America, we have high obesity rates. We have high poverty rate. I think our adult obesity is right around 30%.
We have high disability that ranges around 20%, but we're in an area that covers about 230,000 people total. So, we have one large city of about 90,000 and the rest are rural communities.
So understanding how to help people overcome cardiac arrest, cancer, diabetes.
And finding that path to help them was really important to me. Next slide please.
Is.
So how did we do this? And I'd have to say I didn't do it alone the first time we applied for the WIA.
We just didn't have enough in the bank.
I couldn't get a team together and Karma was my cheerleader and she said apply again.
And here's some tools that you can do so that helped build the team and get our confidence going and.
And Wai said, look at these partners. Try these people like nontraditional partners that you might not think.
Of and so as a result of that, we were able to leverage even more grants from all of the Nuggets and kernels of knowledge that they provided to us.
And then we began to implement the walkability action plan, which I have to say at first the PSE's I was so scared and of that process.
But you know, faculty Karma walked us through it.
And it was really easy.
So don't be scared. Be prepared.
Kind of thing.
Next slide please.
So as Karma collected this and I know that she is going to update it in a year, but.
We reached about 100 and sixty 869,000 people. We had four new plans, 3 system improvements, 5 environmental changes. But I think the really important thing here is I am a staff of one.
So you were looking at the MPO.
So I'm the grant writer.
I'm the director.
I'm all these things, but we were able to take this and leverage it into almost $2,000,000 worth of other grants and building and all of this and the process also helped us understand who to reach out to, who to consider next. Slide please.
So here are a lot of people that we included.
That the NPO in their previous efforts before I was director didn't reach out to. So, we have one of the largest tribal nations in the country, the Cherokee Nation. We also have the Choctaw nation.
We involved hospitals, food banks, United Way, local health, restaurants, all of the people that you might consider, like the library.
Counties, the Arkansas Colleges of health education and one of ours.
Our main proponents, who is still very involved to this day, is First Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith.
Next slide please.
One of the projects that we did through the WIA was called our voice and it's through Stanford Medicine and our partner with the Arkansas College of Health Education heard mark talk about this particular smartphone application.
You can literally take your phone.
Talk to it and it will geolocate.
You can take a picture and you can say what are the issues or what is a good, bad or indifferent.
And so we were able to create citizen scientists through this and what we didn't realize was that partner, that team member with the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education, which is located in Fort Smith, was willing to pay for this program. And I didn't know that they would do.
That before.
No idea.
And so that was.
Really mind blowing for that partnership and then also to be able to hand people just.
A local resident.
A smartphone, if they didn't have one.
We actually did that.
To go and record and document the things that they were seeing that might be a barrier for them to go to the store or go to the doctor or to get on transit. And regrettably this individual who is in the wheelchair has passed but.
But we were so thankful for her input and just what really want to honor her for that next slide, please.
So other triumphs that we had, we had Mark Fenton, we did walk audits, we had 100 people attend.
The overview of our walk audits in a small theater in Fort Smith, including one of our congressional delegation, Senator John Bozeman, and that was huge and as a part of that.
I also invited our local NPR radio station that did a local regional program called Ozarks at large, and they followed us along with about a group of 50 people.
And then also as a result of this, we've been able to train the micro mobility coordinator for the city of Fort Smith and they're developing their own videos and training.
And so the knowledge just keeps continuing on and I think that's.
When the beauty of this program.
Is that you can develop people and it doesn't have to just be one person. It could be many people.
Michael was not involved with the Walkability Action Institute, but because of all the shared knowledge and the people that we knew, we could give that to him. And it's just been amazing the work that he's done.
Next slide please.
So some of the other things that we've been able to do is getting more sidewalks, getting grants to improve downtown projects and parks.
Building trails at the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education, we were able to obtain a grant with the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville for a bike share program called Ride for Smileys in North Fort Smith, which is our low income area because most bike shares are put in more.
Privileged areas.
Is and that was $1,000,000 grant.
So having this experience and understanding different simple and elegant solutions to help people move just was amazing.
It's just mind blowing. It just opened our eyes that yes, we can do this.
And we don't need a lot of money. We can do pilot projects and we can explore these partnerships.
Next slide please.
One of our members of the walkability action team is Talisha Richardson and what I didn't know before she came on the team was that her cousin was killed.
He was a pedestrian crossing, a major Blvd. Later at night to see his sister.
And so we were able to leverage our work with a walkability action institute and work with smart growth.
America on dangerous by design.
And so we created this video as part of that effort and.
I literally was in tears at the end of this video because I had to tape and ask them the questions, but it was so impactful to see when pedestrians and individuals that walk biker rule are not safe. How that impacts a social fabric and social connections within the.
Community.
And hearing that video, it was just heartbreaking. The impact that her cousin had and the losses that the community felt.
Next slide please.
And so our key inspiration through all of this, Keeley Simpson, is a missions coordinator at First Presbyterian Church in Fort Smith.
And she was like, I don't even know why I'm here.
I don't even know how I fit in, and by the end of the project, she said.
This is a project for the people and it was such a stunning and true statement and it felt so good to know that she understood at the end of the Walkability Action Institute what it was all about and in fact continues to remain a big player in key.
Stakeholder in our efforts and we are partnered with her right now to do a transportation fair.
In May, and they're helping us host it.
So those connections continue, those relationships continue to build.
With maybe partners you might not usually meet with.
And so it's been a great experience. Next slide please.
And I just want to thank everyone.
I want to thank YSCDC, the National Association of Chronic Disease directors, for this opportunity for us to grow.
And act as a catalyst and show, yes, a small rural town.
In southeastern Oklahoma, Western Arkansas can accomplish this with one staff member.
And so I just want to challenge everybody out there that you can do this. And with the cheerleading and the support and the guideposts that they provide, you might become a faculty member.
So I'm just as astounded as anybody else that.
I have been granted this.
Honor, you know, and this chance, an opportunity. And so, I really appreciate that.
Thank you. And I will now turn it over to Katie and I will be rooting for a fellow Alaskan. Thank you, Katie.

Reilly, Katie L (DOH)   
Thanks so much, Reese, and thank you everyone so much.
Good morning from Alaska.
It's still morning here and thanks so much for the invitation to speak with you all today and to share Alaska's Wai story with you all.
Next slide please.
So I share this slide with you all because before I moved to Alaska 15 years ago, I had never seen this image, nor did I really understand Alaska's vastness and diversity.
And I think it's an important one for you all to see and understand because it does add unique challenges to the work that we do.
So we at the Alaska Department of Health provide programming and services to a state that stretches, you know, from the equivalent of Minnesota in the north down to Texas in the South and from California in the West, all the way to South Carolina in the east. Next slide.
Please.
And I'll share just a few more quick facts for context building.
But Alaskans who live in our most northern communities don't see the sun for 64 days in the winter but bask in the midnight sun all summer long.
And Alaskans who live in the southeast live in a rainforest.
There's about 200 Alaska villages that can only be reached by airplane or boat making, transportation of people and goods difficult and costly.
While indigenous Alaska.
Native people live in every Alaskan community.
Alaska Native people represent most of our population living in these rural and remote locations.
An infrastructure and services in these villages are often limited and expensive, so some villages lack paved roadways or full service. Grocery stores running water, flush toilets or doctors who live there. And these extremes can and do contribute to making physical activity and other aspects of our work very.
Challenging.
So when we first started looking into hosting in Alaska, Wai, we were very concerned about relevance.
Would this training be too urban for Alaska?
Communities would community members find it practical and valuable?
So we came to Karma and the planning team with lots of questions and a heavy dose of skepticism.
Next slide please.
And this slide really summarizes our Wai experience and timeline.
You can see that it took about three years to successfully complete from those initial discussions.
To implementation and I would say that's unique to us. Other states have certainly implemented this much quicker than we did.
The first two years I kind of broke these out into phases, phase one skepticism and interest.
Phase two inquiry and discovery.
So these two phases.
Really like involve a lot of research.
On our part online research about the program reaching out to Karma and other faculty to learn more, connecting with past Wai participants to share their experience with us all with the goal of figuring out if it was the right fit for us.
And in the end, of course it was, but with some significant tailoring.
So phase three of the was the application process.
So we competitively applied, we felt very grateful because CDC and NCDD were only able to subsidize one state's Wai that year.
And we were very fortunate to be that one state. Thank you very much.
Phase four was the planning and tailoring phase is how I refer to it, and this was the Phase I would say that maybe most impressed me between January and April 2025. There was an incredible amount of tailoring from an ACD, D, CDC and the FAC.
To accommodate the uniqueness of Alaska, to make it a meaningful and impactful training experience for all Alaska.
Whether they lived on the road system or not. So, for example, the team changed the order in which the Wai training components were delivered, and so Karma mentioned the three different models we.
We’re participating in the hybrid model and so typically for that model, there's a virtual kickoff meeting, followed closely by an in person training. After that, in person training, participants were expected to complete what's called the photo voice component of the project and what that is, is a qual.
Of data collection methodology where teams go into their respective communities with cameras and they document various walkability, strengths and weaknesses of their communities in order to inform, you know, opportunities for improvement or action that they could include in their final Wai deliverable, which is a local walk.
For the action plan, so making I want to make sure that's clear.
That was very important to us.
Each participating team does walk away from the Wai with an action focused plan to help make their respective communities safer and more accessible for physical activity.
So that's the typical way in which a hybrid model is delivered. But however for Alaskan, for the first time ever, I believe NAC.
DCDC and the faculty decided to move the photo voice.
Project up to the beginning of the training so that faculty and planning.
And the planning team could really better understand our participating teams and Alaska in general before finalizing their training materials and before making the very long trek up here to facilitate our in person training.
So they use that information that they learn during the photo voice project to help tailor the examples and recommendations they use throughout the rest of the training.
So then phase five was where, you know, the culmination of all this hard work when the Wai was actually delivered to our six teams, we six teams. Like I said, it was a combination of virtual education sessions, A-Team led photo, voice project, an in person Interactive 2.
Day session, followed by a series of virtual education sessions.
All that set our teams up to successfully develop and submit their local walkability action plans, and I'll talk a little bit more about the action plan in later slides.
Phase 6 is what we're in now. Our maintenance phase where we're providing ongoing support.
Technical assistance to our six participating teams, but as Karma mentioned, we continue to receive support just like all Wai teams in the past.
They I mean, first of all, we mountains of resources during the Wai experience.
So fact sheets, you know, entitled things like quick build tips and summaries of projects to support policy change or how to lead walk audits in rural communities. And then Karma mentioned that NACDD Wai alumni.
Which hosts quarterly meetings where all participants from Wai teams from across the nation can come together and continue to learn from each other.
So next slide please.
Here's a quick look at where our six Wai teams came from throughout our state.
We had very good statewide representation, which we were very thrilled about.
We've Kotzebue in the northwest part of Alaska Fairbanks in our interior, Sitka down in our SE Panhandle.
We had teams from the towns of Homer and Kenai down in South Central Alaska, and then two teams represented our Southwest region of the state, Dillingham and Bethel.
So in addition to the six teams, the six local teams, I should say this, there was a statewide team of multidisciplinary professionals that was also formed.
So our start statewide team was made-up of both public and tribal health professionals. So those.
Those of us in the Department of Health, but then our partners who actually.
Manage the reach grant at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium were also Co leads in this project.
Our Department of Transportation was heavily involved in our state team.
They provided the transportation and planning representatives and then an elected official from our state legislature with a passion for active transportation was our elected official representative as well. Next slide, please.
So ways in which the Wai has impacted.
Alaska and the work we do includes, you know, it's directly informing statewide and community level active transportation span and reach strategies. A current statewide example to share with you is the fact that our Department of Transportation is in the process of updating its transportation alternatives program. Gu.
Or tap guidebook. So for those that don't know, tap is a set aside from the surface Transportation Block Grant program.
That provides funding to all states for a variety of small scale transportation.
Projects such as pedestrian and bicycle facilities, recreational trails, safe routes to schools, things like that.
So our dot partner recently reached out to our team for assistance in adding scoring criteria and guidance language to integrate health and accessibility considerations directly into this new TAP project evaluation framework.
So what does that mean? Inclusion of this type of scoring criteria means that every proposed TAP project going forward in the state of Alaska.
Will need to take health and accessibility into consideration with which at this point it they don't always do that.
So those tap projects that include, you know, a strong health and accessible component or accessibility component would then receive higher scoring and would be therefore in a better position to actually be funded.
So we're really thrilled about that. You know, potential policy and systems change that is we're working on right now.
And while our relationship with dot did already exist before.
Hosting the Alaska Wai will say it definitely was strengthened because of our Co participation on the statewide team and made projects like this tap guidance update more likely to happen. And that kind of leads into my second point, supporting partnerships. So not only do you know strengthening existing part.
Like our one with dot, but it introduced many new partnerships, particularly with our six local.
Wai teams, but also national partnerships. You know the faculty.
You know.
We're so gracious in offering their continued support.
You know you can tell it's a passion project for them.
And so even when the training is done, everyone provided their e-mail addresses and welcomed, you know, follow up as needed.
So we really appreciate those nationwide partnerships that group as well.
And then finally, you know it's contributing to meaningful on the ground successes.
So our local Wai teams are currently implementing their walkability action plans that they finalized back in July.
Some of those plans or actions include, you know, promoting the safe routes to school program.
In fact, there was so much interest in safe routes to school.
I know I think almost every, every one of our six local teams had some safe routes to school component in their action plan, but we're now developing a statewide safe routes to school community of practice to really kind of coordinate and advance that work. Since there was such.
A great interest.
Local teams are also conducting area specific walkability audits.
They're implementing a variety of demonstration projects, such as temporary traffic calming or crosswalks, all to inform permanent change in the future.
Just a quick note on these photos.
These are photos from our Wai in person experience last May.
You see, it's a mix of classroom type educational sessions, but also community in the community. Activities such as conducting a walk audit.
We did a scavenger hunt all really, you know, with the design to get us out in the community, assessing walkability.
Strengths and weaknesses. Next slide, please.
So what's next for Alaska in terms of active transportation work?
Well, I've mentioned some of these already. I mean our we're continuing to support our Wai teams in their implementation plans with span and REACH and other available funding, we're providing ongoing Wai team TA setting up monthly calls with the with our teams to track their action plan Pro.
You know, provide some troubleshooting for challenges and share successes. We have also set up similar to the Nationwide Alumni network. We have a quarterly call with all six teams so they can stay in touch with each other as well.
So we want to continue to stay connected and learn from each other in partnership with the OT. We continue to support and Co facilitate our statewide active transportation coalition.
And we are actively exploring ways in which to leverage the new rural health transformation funding.
So this is another funding source that all states will be getting in the next five years.
So I'd encourage everyone to look into this if you haven't already.
But given the focus on chronic disease prevention within the rural health transformation funding scope of work and priorities, our team is working directly to try to direct some of that funding towards active and transportation policy systems and environmental changes.
So we're excited about that.
And then the photos you're looking at here are images that our teams from Fairbanks and Bethel included in their photo voice project presentations.
And then the middle is our statewide coalition logo.
And so that is it for me. But I will turn it over to my counterpart, Joy.

Joy Sims   
Hi, good afternoon.
My name is Joy Sims.
I am the state physical activity coordinator for the state physical and nutrition program with wellhead Louisiana. And today I'm going to briefly share with you all what we learned from our time with Louisiana walkability in 2023 and how we use that to expand the effort to.
Address gaps.
In support through span next slide please.
In 2023, well ahead Louisiana, the chronic disease prevention and health care access arm of the Louisiana Department of Health, hosted the Walkability Action Institute in person with five teams from Abbeville, Hammond, Zachary Sunset and Bunkie, Louisiana. These communities entered with different levels of readiness for action.
Planning and implementation but all were very eager to engage and learn.
Abbeville the team pictured here came to Wai with engaged leadership and active planning on their imagine the master plan and the completion of their downtown roadway improvements last year reflects success achieved by their team prior to, during and following the Wai in the three years since the Institute.
We've stayed connected with these teams and we've worked with our partners at the Center for Planning Excellence, which is the only nonprofit planning organization in the state to continue supporting action plan implementation leading to many wins for our cohort which are listed on the screen.
And we hosted the Louisiana Movability Community of Practice in 2025, where we had presentations from Karma from our partners at CPEX and from the mayor who was pictured here in blue, the mayor of Abbeville, Roslyn White.
We also had an open discussion around what the cohort viewed as assets and gaps in the support that were provided in the time since Wai and those conversations helped us understand what worked, what barriers remained and where support could be improved.
Next slide please.
The input from the community of practice and follow up conversations with our state partners consistently pointed to three overlapping areas where communities needed stronger support and capacity, education and readiness. Community shared that having strong elected officials and volunteers were key assets to planning and implementation, but cited burn.
Unclear roles and inconsistent engagement as ongoing barriers.
Additionally, state partners providing technical assistance also.
Noted challenges in supporting project momentum due to community reprioritizations or programmatic changes and declining local participation of teams which all of these issues go hand in hand and both groups emphasize the need for more education around PSE change and highlighted broader communication gaps around PSA BASIC PSE concept.
There were several comments that pointed to difficulties in communicating the value of Community design changes to the public, with communities expressing a need for credible health data that connects the why behind the what we're trying to change and what this feedback in mind, we've worked to create institute.
That can support sustained technical assistance and cross sector collaboration.
Address gaps in PSC education to encourage more change across the state and engage teams at different levels of readiness for long term sustainable change. Next slide.
Please sense Walkability action institute. We've learned from our partners and communities that state and local efforts are sometimes disconnected and that there can be an overlap in areas of work.
So organizations working towards the same goals or sometimes even working in the same areas and they aren't aware.
Additionally, projects stall between planning and implementation because communities need clear pathways to agencies like the DOTD for support.
In approvals and communication across state partners could be a bit more consistent so that we're not missing out on important updates and that we're sharing important data.
So we form the active people healthy Louisiana Partnership, which is modeled after the CDC's active People Healthy Nation initiative, which aims to increase physical activity across the nation by 2027. And this partnership brings together key partners in the state that are all aligned with community.
Design efforts like the Louisiana DOTD Cpex the Department of Administration and the LSU Accenture.
Who was the first to use the APHN logo in the state and other organizations as well? And our goals are to share information, elevate state level initiatives and support alignment and strategic coordination across organizations as well as advancing long term sustainability and active transportation and community design state.
Next slide please.
Communities across Louisiana have strong ideas and they have strong motivations for why they do or why they want to make change.
But sometimes they lack that Technical Support and structure after planning ends, and so that helped that kind of causes them to lose a little bit of momentum.
So we do have our team here, WI Team Bunkie was completed an early goal by reconstructing a local park. But around the time that they shifted to their second goal of creating or redeveloping a Community Center.
One of the active members on the team actually stepped down to participate in the election. So, with the current mayor, that's a part of this team and this active team member that's running. We have a little bit of a barrier and a slowdown with the project, so burn.
Leadership turnover and all of these things affect readiness or just a few things that affect our readiness.
So we realized that our team's needed stronger collaboration and support to build strong action plans and we did want to host Walkability Action Institute. But after having some of these conversations with our teams and our partners, we saw an opportunity to collaborate with existing state programs and.
Expand the reach of Wai of the Wai model in our state. So with strategic planning support from Karma Mark Fenton. Again our partners at CPEC y'all are probably going to hear from them a lot and our partners at the LSU accent with the High obesity program we work.
To develop a framework to match Louisiana communities with appropriate level of support levels of support.
And technical assistance at any stage of readiness where they may be the APHN Community Design initiative aims to establish this statewide community engagement pathway that takes teams through visioning, action, planning and implementation support.
And so we folded the action planning and the Community of practice into this effort, and it is currently being piloted. Next slide, please.
So more feedback that we got or what we also learned is that sharing.
Information can spark interest statewide and this is essential, of course, to increasing the number of Community design projects accomplished in the state, our communities and state partners shared the need for stronger communication between each other and a desire for peer-to-peer learning, and they also requested more.
Information on available resources and two of our communities which are pictured here. We have Wai, team Hammond and we have Wai team Zachary and so.
Actually, during the in the past.
Three years with implementation with them, both of them shifted priority.
So we asked the question how can we keep teams like this engaged in the work if they're interested or even bring on new teams that are engaged?
And so we wanted to create this space where we could do so and we did that by planning for the Louisiana Move Ability Network.
This is a network that we're building for pretty much any individual or community in the state that's interested in improving.
The community designer, physical activity opportunities where they live.
And we will work with the APHL partners to present a wide range of topics through webinars and newsletters, and we'll also work to gather feedback.
This is an initiative that we plan to launch by the fall, but again it's informed by what we learned from the feedback from our WI team's next slide please.
Many Louisiana communities have shown an interest in change, but as we've talked through a little bit of the examples today.
Many very in preparedness to implement these changes, so partners that participated in the state, partners that participated in Wai mentioned a need to better understand the local leadership landscape of set team roles and highlight what teams have already accomplished ahead of their action plan.
Additionally, we've also been looking at how we can troubleshoot teams that have gone through Wai that may have hit a barrier. For example, the team pictured here is from our team with sunset and they hosted a very a very good demonstration last year that focused on Cross Wal.
Traffic calming and it was mostly received well, but they did get a little bit of negative feedback from the community and the crosswalk study that came from that, although it was very informative.
That did not get approved.
By the local engineer.
So we're having to go back to with this team and figure out well, what do we have that we can that we can use to support or what information do we need to get to support this study so that we can make these changes and the planning active.
Community environments tool is one of the ways that we were aiming to do that.
So this is a self-assessment that is currently being piloted with the Community design initiative.
That is pretty much a checklist that reviews 4 common areas of readiness.
Knowledge of the problem, stakeholder engagement, planning and resources and early action and implementation. It sourced the teams into three simple scores.
Which Level 3?
Which is that basic awareness building or level one, which is this?
This team is ready to implement and get their project rolling and then based on what they have and what they know, we support matching them with their with their best next steps to help them with their action plan.
Next slide please.
All of these efforts, these initiatives.
Overlap to support coordination with state partners and support Community project implementation by expanding access to educational opportunities.
Building capacity through technical assistance and sustaining support and improving their readiness to engage and change.
By sharing resources that can help them understand where they're starting from, and all of this mostly stemmed from our engagement with walkability.
Institute 23.
So we appreciate that they've helped us identify gaps that our program span can address with initiatives that are aimed at improving Community design for physical activity across the state.
Next slide please.
So our goal is to keep closing the gap between Louisiana communities and long term sustainable change at least to help your outcomes. We are very proud of what these communities were able to accomplish in the time when we look forward to accomplishing more.
Thank you for the opportunity for us to share their stories and I definitely want to thank Karma and NACDD for not only their influence, but their ongoing support as we work to expand the reach of what they've been able to teach us.
Thank you all for your time.
I will now pass it to Katie.

Mugavero, Kristy (CDC/NCCDPHP/DNPAO)  
Thank you so much to all of our presenters for these excellent presentations.
They were really informative.
I'm going to move on to a couple of questions. So, and I'm going to start with Karma.
So, Karma, how many teams are suitable for bringing together or hosting a Walking Action institute?

Karma Edwards   
Well, we've done it for as many as 12 before, and we've done it for as few as four. I think 4 interdisciplinary teams is a nice minimum, 12 gets. We've done it, but it's not our sweet spot.
Our sweet spot is between six and eight teams, but we've certainly done it for 1210. Four, six and eight various places. As an example, we are working with six.
Local communities in the state of Iowa this year.
And we're working with four local communities in the state of Tennessee also this year.

Mugavero, Kristy (CDC/NCCDPHP/DNPAO)   
Great. Thank you for that.
Good to know that there's a lot of flexibility.
In in doing these so really almost any number of teams will work.
OK, so because of in the interest of time, we have some several different questions, but I think I'm going to ask the other presenters all the same question, because I think this applies to all of you.
So you all sort of gave very impressive list of partners and then number of different groups that you worked with.
So can you talk a little bit more about how you went about identifying and engaging the partners?

Reese Brewer   
Sure, I'll. I'll jump in.
What we did was we really started looking for people who we knew were champions of being healthy and possibly individuals or organizations that.
We hadn't worked with before.
And then just talking with other folks.
In fact, I went to a group at an oil company.
Called Hannah Oiling Company and they were active bicyclists. And they said you need to go talk to so and so. And so I just set up meetings and talk to them and tell them about what we were doing, what our plan was, the type of team that we.
We’re trying to build what type of commitment I needed from them and then it would just open.
Oh, have you talked to this person?
You need to go talk to Charlotte Tidwell over at Antioch Food Bank, you know.
Go over and talk to Mercy Hospital.
They'll let you take surveys over there.
And gain information about how people travel and how they get to their medical appointments.
So it really in a way was word by word of mouth and then also having the support from Karma, Mark, Phil and the walkability and institute to go.
Did you think about the Traffic Safety officer at the schools?
No, never occurred to me because my usual players are the dots, the regional governments and.
Other MPO's and local governments. So outside of that box, we hadn't really done a lot of relationship building.
And then also folks with disability associations in the region and schools.
And places where they do workforce development.
So that's really how it started.
And then we just kept rolling from there.

Reilly, Katie L (DOH) 
Sure, I can jump in as well.
Thanks for the question. And I would echo what Rhys just mentioned about really finding the Champions. And one thing I'll say about Alaska, it's huge in geography, but it the community is pretty small and tight.
So you know, a lot of us know each other in some capacity or you know, I like. I happen to know the state legislature that ended up being on our team is an active commuter here in Anchorage and so.
Just kind of getting those kind of initial like I think this person cares.
About this issue, based on you know things that I know.
And then just reaching out and making the pitch, I mean I will say that it's a, it's such a powerful and important subject area.
It wasn't a hard sell, like people were very eager to join once they heard what it was all about and what the, you know, end goal was.
And so there. Yeah, that was how we did.
It was, you know, coming together. Like I said, we had already had this existing relationship with dot.
So we relied heavily on dot for like the transportation planning folks.
Like, that's their that's their role.
And then we really worked on the public health and tribal health and elected official kind of recruitment efforts as well, so.
That was that was one way we did it.
We also had a statewide active transportation coalition that had been active for a couple years, so we certainly put the word out through that through that network, that existing network as well.

Joy Sims  
I'll go super-duper quickly because I have probably the most unique experience.
I didn't actually participate in Wai was not a part of the team when Wai was hosted, I was actually on the high obesity program team.
So from my perspective and we're still looking at partners to support the CDI, which again models this.
So, still speaking to these same parties, it's almost like we're working backwards.
So we had CPEC's at the original Wai and I think we had our partners at the high OBC program at there as well.
So we actually reapplied for Wai this year and we want and we were looking at, OK.
So who do we need at the table with this partnership?
And that's pretty much what that was.
What? That was what our partnership is formed from.
So our partnership is pretty much us working backwards from that initial Wai saying these are the people we should have had at the table. And these are the ones that we want.
So pretty much anyone that's with the CD 4 PA strategy community design for physical activity is where we went looking for support collaboration.

Mugavero, Kristy (CDC/NCCDPHP/DNPAO)  
Well, thank you for those answers.
That's really helpful.
I mean, just the breadth of partners that you all mentioned?
Really interesting to hear, sort of how you all went about it in a little bit different ways and that there are a variety of ways to go about doing that. So that's great.
So thank you to all of our presenters.
This has been a very informative webinar.
Before we run out of time, I do just want to quickly go over the instructions for people who want to obtain continuing education credits.
The instructions are on this slide. The biggest, probably the biggest thing to know is you go to CDC train which you can just Google or people are dropping it into the link now or into the dropping the link into the chat now.
And the course catalog code is here.
You just need to make sure you do it by May 30th, although it will be on demand. So, I do think that if you were to miss the May 30th, you could watch the webinar again and actually do the same steps.
Later, so there are no fees for this and so I hope that this will be useful to people and all of our upcoming DNPO seminar series. Our events in this series will also have continuing education credits available, so we're very excited about that.
So thank you again to everybody for joining and to our presenters for your excellent presentations for your excellent work doing this.
That's the important piece of this but thank you for sharing it with us all.
Thanks everyone.

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