After a five-year funding initiative resulted in significant improvements in opportunities for Cook County area residents to be healthier, local residents say the impacts will be felt for years.
The funding initiative, which came from the Center for Prevention at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, was provided to Sawtooth Mountain Clinic,
Federally Qualified Community Health Center, to help local and area residents increase physical activity and improve access to healthier foods. It helped, in part, to spur the Moving Matters project, a community-based effort that has worked to create opportunities for residents to walk and bike.
“The Center for Prevention recognized, as did we, that our residents face many challenges to being physically active or eating well. So with their financial support, we began a multi-faceted, community-based effort to help change this dynamic,” said Maren Webb, from Sawtooth Mountain Clinic.
Webb said the five-year effort engaged in multiple local, partnership based projects.
Among those efforts were the Great Place Project; the creation of city, county and tribal active living plans; the development of a women’s leadership program to bring together local women to engage around community based health issues; a county-wide healthy eating initiative to improve access to healthy foods for seniors and children; a pilot project for clinic-based prescriptions for fresh produce; a partnership with the City of Grand Marais and Cook County on a pedestrian plan; connecting lower-income and senior housing to the school zone by supporting the completion of a sidewalk where none existed before; the development of the Gitchi Gami Trail connection through Tofte; the Safe Routes to School Partnership; installation of two bike maintenance stations in Grand Marais; a Health Impact Assessment on the Highway 61 corridor; and supporting the Workers on Wheels program that provides bicycles for international seasonal employees in Grand Marais.
“The common thread associated with the success of each of these projects was that community and area partners worked side-by-side with us and others,” said Rita Plourde, CEO of Sawtooth Mountain Clinic.
Those partners have included the Cook County Chamber of Commerce, City of Grand Marais, Cook County, the Minnesota Extension Service, Grand Portage Wellness Committee, Sawtooth Mountain Clinic & Grand Portage Health Service, Grand Portage Trust Lands, Cook County Community YMCA, North Shore Health Care Foundation, Arrowhead Regional Development Commission, Minnesota Department of Health, Minnesota Department of Transportation, dozens of businesses and organizations through the Great Place Project, and others.
One of the most visible undertakings will be the effort to make Highway 61 through Grand Marais safer due to the fact that the community had long identified it as an unsafe barrier for local residents and visitors alike to walk or bike around town.
The effort started with a partnership with the City of Grand Marais to host community engagement meetings and visioning sessions around how to fix the problems residents had identified with Highway 61. Those public engagement efforts resulted in an actual project that better meets the needs and desires of the community, including safety and health needs.
“Unlike many other communities that have had to sit by and accept what a highway reconstruction project gives them, Grand Marais took the initiative to not only make sure that this project will take place but that it will be done in a way that truly meets the needs of the community,” said Jay Arrowsmith DeCoux, mayor of Grand Marais.
While Moving Matters has become well-known in the area, its work has also attracted attention beyond Grand Marais and Cook County. The public engagement involved with the Highway 61 reconstruction project is now seen as a model for community engagement around highway reconstruction projects. Grand Marais also made it to the second round of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Prize, one of 38 communities invited from a pool of 190 communities that applied in the first round in 2017.
Grand Marais has been recognized as a Silver Level Bicycle Friendly Community, the smallest in the nation, and Sawtooth Mountain Clinic received a Silver Level status for Bicycle Friendly Business. The Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota awarded coordinator, Maren Webb, with the 2018 Bicycle Friendly Community Champion Award.
“Blue Cross is proud of the great work Sawtooth Mountain Clinic, Grand Marais and Cook County have done under this funding initiative,” said Anika Ward, director of the Center for Prevention. “The success they’ve seen with their projects will support better health in the Arrowhead region for generations.”
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota established the Center for Prevention with proceeds from the successful lawsuit it and the State of Minnesota filed against the tobacco industry. The Center’s mission is to make healthy choices possible for all Minnesotans by supporting efforts that tackle the leading causes of preventable disease—commercial tobacco use, physical inactivity and unhealthy eating—to increase health equity, transform communities, and create a healthier state that benefits everyone.
Sawtooth Mountain Clinic CEO Rita Plourde said the work associated with the funding from Blue Cross will continue, and efforts are currently under way to find replacement funding sources. She also emphasized that the initial funding support has positively changed the community in more ways than one.
“One of the long-term impacts of Moving Matters is that it built a sense of confidence that will last for years, as well as a network of citizens who will be engaged in the community for the long-haul,” said Lori Rothstein, U of M Extension Educator and Grand Marais resident.
Great Place Project has left a visible imprint on Cook County
One of the more well-known projects Moving Matters engaged in is the Great Place Project, a collaborative effort with the Cook County Chamber of Commerce.
In its fifth year, the project works to support the creation of places throughout Cook County and Grand Portage that promote physical well-being, mental well-being or both.
Individual projects that have won grants in the past are those that demonstrate the ability to create small nooks of beauty in the built environment— projects that cause people to stop for a longer look.
Two prime examples of what the Great Place Project is all about are the outdoor ping-pong table in front of the Grand Marais Library, Trinity Lutheran trails in Hovland, and the community made mural on the alley side of Birchbark Books & Gifts in Grand Marais.
Maren Webb said in addition to the wonderful places created through the Great Place Project, it has helped to forge long-term community partnerships.
“This project never would have been the success that it is without the work of Jim Boyd with the Cook County Chamber and local champions like artists Betsy Bowen and Dave Woerheide,” said Webb.
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