Understanding and addressing barriers to implementation of environmental and policy interventions to support physical activity and healthy eating in rural communities.

Purpose: Rural residents are at greater risk of obesity than urban and suburban residents. Failure to meet physical activity and healthy eating recommendations play a role. Emerging evidence shows the effectiveness of environmental and policy interventions to promote physical activity and healthy eating.

If you build it, they will come: lessons from developing walking trails in rural Missouri.

Given the high rates of sedentary behaviors, attempts to increase physical activity have incorporated individual and, more recently, policy and environmental approaches for promotion of activity. This article presents a summary of the approaches being used by the Ozark Heart Health Coalitions in developing walking trails in rural Missouri. In summarizing these approaches the authors describe 10 lessons with the aim of articulating the process and, thereby, increasing interest and capacity in development of walking trails.

Process evaluation of a monitoring log system for community coalition activities: five-year results and lessons learned.

Purpose: Coalitions can be a successful way to promote healthy initiatives throughout a community. To properly measure the success of coalition-based interventions, it is important to conduct a process evaluation of coalition activities and establish a system for evaluating outcomes. This article describes a process evaluation of a monitoring and feedback system for community coalitions targeting chronic disease risk reduction.