Paint the Town Blue, Cedar Falls Health Organizers Urge

Marabeth Soneson wants to paint the Cedar Valley blue.

That is, she wants the town to know about the Blue Zones Project, in which Cedar Falls is competing with other towns across the state to be named one of 10 Iowa Blue Zone communities.

Selected towns will receive help from international experts to transform their towns into centers of health and wellness.

"I think the project is just really a holistic way for a community to come together to make decisions and create a healther community as a whole," Soneson said.

She is working on the town's application and is co-chair of the Healthier Cedar Falls Task Force, a group of 39 community members formed about a year ago to examine ways to improve the town's health.

"We want our residents to move more and eat better and have a better purpose in life." - Mayor Jon Crews

The project is participating in a statewide initiative to enourage healthy living and fight obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control, two thirds of Iowans are overweight or obese, something the project aims to counter by encouraging communities to band together and pledge to take action to lead healthier lives.

Part of the Blue Zone selection criteria for the project is demonstrated communtiy support. Residents can show support by signing up here or texting BZP to 772937.

As of Dec. 29, 6.8 percent of Cedar Falls residents had registered their support. The top towns, according to the website, are Oelwein with about 37 percent, Woodbine with about 35 percent and Grundy Center with about 31 percent. Cedar Falls came in 27th on the list of 58 competing communities.

Mayor Jon Crews, however, pointed out that most of the towns with higher rankings are small communities where less people have to register to get a high percentage. Cedar Falls is well ahead of Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, each with less than two percent support and Des Moines, with less than one percent support. Crews encouraged Cedar Falls residents to get involved.

"It's important to improve your health for your own self value," he said. "And for employers, it can improve productivity and lower insurance costs."

The town's application will be submitted Jan. 4, as will an application for Waterloo and a seperate one for the Cedar Valley Alliance, which would have both towns working together on health initiatives. Finalist communities will be announced Feb. 10.

If Cedar Falls is selected, Crews said, someone would be hired to come in and manage a program for about three years. The program would work with city leaders and businesspeople on long term changes to make the town healthier.

Some ways that could happen, Crews said, include expanding bike trails, building exercise parks along existing trails, encouraging children to walk to school by recruiting walking chaperones, creating more community gardens and encouraging local restaurants to put more healthy options on their menus.

Some of these initiatives are already underway, he and Soneson said, and they won't stop if Cedar Falls isn't selected as a Blue Zone community. The benefit, they said, would be in getting professional advice on creating engagement and integrating all the ideas together.

"It's not like the information on what you need to do to be healthy isn't available, but how do you get a large group involved in doing this?" Crews said. "But if we're not selected we're not going to just sit and say, 'Well, we shouldn't work on that.' We want our residents to move more and eat better and have a better purpose in life."