More than 30 like-minded community members came together at the Yarrawonga Mulwala Golf Club Resort last Thursday to discuss how they can create change to tackle the many factors which may contribute to problems with the health of our community.
The major aim of the meeting was to find people to help lead and influence a community response to promote Active Living and Health Eating for children in Moira.
A number of things were discussed including the Yarrawonga community being fortunate to have been selected to take part in a ground-breaking research project in conjunction with Deakin University to improve the health and wellbeing of our children and future populations at a local level.
The project is called RESPOND and Yarrawonga Health is the leading agency in this area.
It is a partnership between twelve local government areas in Victoria, the Department of Health, the Department of Education and Deakin University’s global obesity centre.
The research acknowledges that there are many contributing factors to maintaining good health and social connection within a community, and many of these factors can be related.
The community members have previously worked to outline many of these factors, and on Thursday, August 1, they began to map the actions already happening within the community and creating ideas for future actions to create change.
The main themes which were discussed were levels of physical activity, access to affordable healthy produce and support/education to make healthy dietary choices, community infrastructure, parenting support and skills, and access to services.
The community members are motivated and keen to continue to work on many of these actions together.
They also welcome other community members who may like to become involved in one or more of these actions to contact Carmel Saunders at Yarrawonga Health on (03) 5743 8501.
