National Health Outreach and Engagement Conference 2024

Garner, C.
The Healthier Together project, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention High
Obesity Program, supports collaboration between the Cooperative Extension System, local
communities, and an interdisciplinary team at the University level to address food and physical
activity access. The purpose of the Healthier Together initiative is to implement environmental
change strategies for obesity prevention in five rural counties where over 40% of adults are
obese. Extension Agents began working towards these changes by developing community
coalitions to assess needs and select evidence-based strategies to improve access to healthier
foods and physical activity, to reduce the rates of obesity, and to improve economic viability.
Community coalitions worked together to identify, direct and support the environmental
changes most appropriate. The coalitions selected several strategies to improve access to
healthy foods and safe places to be active that they believed would be sustainable. As a result
of the complexity of this project, a unique interdisciplinary collaboration was built among
Agriculture and Natural Resources, Family and Consumer Sciences, and 4-H agents within
Extension, four Colleges, and community-based coalitions all working together towards
creating healthier environments to reduce obesity in rural communities. The project is housed in
the College of Public Health with programming and county support through UGA Extension.
Through the project, partners work together to bring the best resources to the communities that
need it most. This poster showcases the results of this project.