Advocating for Active Living in Your Community, Part 1

By: Maya Physical Activity Coordinator for the MA Department of Public Health

“It is unreasonable to expect that people will change their behavior easily when so many forces in the social, cultural and physical environment conspire against such change.” - Institute of Medicine

I love this quote because I think it shows how complicated it really is for someone to change their behavior. It’s just not as simple as telling someone to “eat better” or “move more.” Yes, those may be the end goals but getting there is not that straightforward.

Each of the choices we make daily are influenced by different people, places or circumstances, whether we realize it or not. There are groups of people - our families, friends, co-workers, healthcare providers for example - who can impact on our decisions. And there are places (and policies that govern those places) that also have an effect on the choices we make: these are the places we live, work, learn and play.

Chew on this for a minute. It is not easy to eat at least 8-10 servings of fruits and vegetables every day if you can’t stock your fridge with delicious, colorful produce because the selection at your local grocery store is not really all that colorful, or maybe it is too expensive or perhaps the grocery store is too far away. So, while you know that you should eat more fruits and veggies, your environment has made it really hard for you to make that choice.

On the other hand, it would be easy and fun to reach the recommended amount of physical activity (2.5 hours of moderately intense activity per week for adults) if there was a safe, well lit, nicely landscaped bicycle path that went from your house to your office, and once you arrived at your office, there was a secure place to lock up your bicycle and shower facilities in the building so you could freshen up. What a great way to start your day, right?

These two examples show how our environment can influence our ability and decisions to eat better or be more active. Access to affordable fresh fruits and vegetables, aggressive pricing strategies for produce, paths that connect to destinations or places of interest, and secure bicycle facilities are examples of policies or environmental strategies that can encourage a person to make the healthy choice, more easily.

Because our ability to eat better and move more is so connected to the environment we live in, Mass in Motion has made it a priority to support local initiatives in making the healthy choice the easy choice for community members. The Department of Public Health has joined forces with Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA, Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA Foundation, Boston Foundation, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, MetroWest Community Health Care Foundation, Tufts Health Plan Foundation and The Medical Foundation to provide a great opportunity for cities and towns, over the next two years, to 1) engage their municipal leadership, community partners and members, 2) assess their existing environment as it relates to healthy eating and active living, and 3) create, and begin implementation of, an action plan that is based on a variety of policy and environmental strategies like the examples I mentioned earlier.

It’s high time that our environments - socially, culturally and physically - conspired to make the healthy choice the easy choice…. not the other way around.

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This post was originally published on the MA Department of Public Health's blog, Commonwealth Conversations, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the MA DPH.