More About Walking

Originally published by Olmsted County Public Health Services Newsletter, December, 2007, In Good Health, A Health and Wellness Newsletter.

Don’t let winter pass you by, get up, get out, and get active!

• Play Frisbee and have fun falling into snowdrifts as you reach for the catch!
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Originaly published by Olmsted County Public Health Services Newsletter, November 2007, In Good Health, A Health and Wellness Newsletter.

Staying motivated to exercise during the winter months may be difficult for some people. Remind yourself of the benefits of exercising and the routine you will maintain during the winter months. It will also help you shake the “winter blues”. Exercising can still be done outside as long as cold-weather safety tips are practiced. There are also many things you can do indoors as well; it just might require a little creativity. All you need is 30 minutes or more on most days of the week.

The Rochester-Olmsted County Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) is currently soliciting applications for new members. The committee works to improve conditions for biking and walking in Rochester and Olmsted County.

For more information on BPAC, see the BPAC (and related pages) on the Olmsted County web site.

Information below taken from Walk Score, a website dedicated to helping people find walkable places to live.

Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.

Why Walking Matters

Walkable neighborhoods offer surprising benefits to our health, the environment, and our communities.

Better health
A study in Washington State found that the average resident of a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood weighs 7 pounds less than someone who lives in a sprawling neighborhood1. Residents of walkable neighborhoods drive less and suffer fewer car accidents, a leading cause of death between the ages of 15 - 45.

1. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota (Blue Cross) has released a Workplaces on the Move request for proposals to help Minnesota employers encourage better health among their employees by increasing physical activity. Blue Cross will select up to 20 small to mid-size Minnesota employers in 2007 to receive three-year contracts that will range from $25,000 to $100,000 depending on the size of the company. The postmark deadline for proposals is May 15, 2007. For more information, visit www.preventionminnesota.com and click on the Community Funding link.
2. The third annual Physical Activity and Nutrition (PAN) Forum is scheduled for May 2, 2007. It is titled Sharing Success Stories: Moving from Planning to Action. The forum will be held at the University of Minnesota Continuing Education and Conference Center in St. Paul. The forum will provide workshop sessions and round-table discussions that share ideas and strategies to help successfully implement school wellness policies. To register, visit www.hennepin.us with key word search: PAN.
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Steps to a Healthier Rochester is offering small grant funds available for employee wellness initiatives. Three ($500) grants will be awarded to Rochester employers for the purpose of improving employee health and increasing healthy behaviors.

How can the funds be used?

The Work Well, Bee Well mini-grants aim to improve healthy behaviors among staff of Rochester employers. These funds are available to assist with development of worksite wellness teams, enhance wellness action plans or policies for an organization, implement a healthy behavior program or challenge, purchase incentives in conjunction with specific worksite wellness programs or a combination of the above.

The Wellness Council of America Wellness Campaign has put together a document entitled 12 Healthy Holiday Habits. It has great ideas to stay active during the holidays. You can read a copy here. Please know this is a large PDF file.

Ideas for your organizations to keep staff and family in a healthy state of mind this holiday season.

Inside this document you'll find:

• Ideas for Company Sponsored Activities
• Resource Ideas
• Sample Promotional Article
• Employee Handouts
• Tracking Forms
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The loss of open space in Chicago is not uncommon to other developing cities in the region and country as a whole. In these cases, planners have to expand on their outlooks in creating new open space opportunities. This may involve converting an abandoned railroad right-of-way to a bike trail, for example. Currently, the Chicago Park District is looking at proposals which may have been overlooked as “open space” projects, but when treated a bit more as untraditional ideas of open space can really add benefits to a community that may be seeing less and less green and open areas.

One such project involves a 3-mile former railroad track, the Bloomingdale Line. The trail runs through Bucktown, Logan Square and Humboldt Park and can offer much needed trails for bikers, walker, and runners. The trail is interesting because it is 15-feet above the ground so people using the trail can travel safely in a linear way through the neighborhoods while getting a rare “bird’s-eye view” of the communities they pass through.

Above photo: Joe, RNeighbors Intern shows NeighborWalkers how to work their pedometers.


Participants get a free pedometer when starting with the NeighborWalks program. Here are some tips on the best way to put your pedometer to good use.


What is a pedometer?

A pedometer is a tool used for walking that tracks the number of steps you take. It only works for walking as it is not designed to track biking or running. The pedometers you are receiving today track both your daily number of steps and your weekly total of steps. Simply by paying more attention to the number of steps we take and the more walking we do, the greater health benefits we see. Walking is the simplest, easiest, cheapest form of physical activity!