Make Over Your Town

Lessons from Albert Lea

The Furlands spend time together planting a new garden. — Photo by Allen Brisson-Smith

– By Jon Spayde

Cheerful clusters of walkers wave to each other on their way to work, to church, to the park. In the produce aisle of a grocery store, two people spot each other and exchange smiles of complicity. "Have you tried the chard?" one asks. At a morning meeting, donuts have disappeared from the conference table, replaced by grapes and cashews. At home, a nine-year-old reminds her mom of the family's pledge: no more than half an hour of TV a day.

Welcome to Albert Lea, Minnesota, the town chosen for a longevity makeover, a.k.a. the AARP/Blue Zones Vitality Project, sponsored by United Health Foundation. It's a research-backed effort to put into practice the principles that Blue Zones founder, and New York Times best-selling author, Dan Buettner discovered while exploring five places around the world where people live long and healthy lives. It kicked off in January of this year and will wind up in mid-October. The project's goals have been officially embraced by more than two thousand signed-on citizens in this town of 18,000. But Blue Zones Health Initiatives manager Joel Spoonheim guesses that the project's influence has spread via back-fence conversations and other informal contacts to something like 50 percent of the town's adult population. (And Albert Lea's children, who learned about it in school, have been into it from the start.)

Project and town leaders and participants agree that the Vitality Project has captured the town's imagination and ramped up people's health awareness. And, they say, it's connected Albert Leans with one another in a host of new ways, from those words of mutual support in the grocery store to friendships formed in community gardens to memberships in lively, laughter-filled walking clubs—and beyond.

So, could something this big, this much fun, and this important happen in your town? It can if you want it to.

Pointers to Get You Started

Think big:

While it might be tempting to cherry-pick just one or two of the many ideas and initiatives in the Vitality Project, project director Joel Spoonheim and Albert Lea city manager Victoria Simonsen both emphasize that a lot of the energy of the project has come from its broad scope and buffet-like variety, which ranges from cooking classes to "walking school buses" (kids who walk to school under watchful adult eyes, picking up kids as they go), expert talks to simple suggestions for healthier living. It's best to try for a large enough number of initiatives to generate excitement.

"If your goal is to bring real change to people's lives," says Spoonheim, "you need to be comprehensive. No single one of our ideas is the silver bullet; they all work together holistically, and they all contribute to keeping people's enthusiasm up." At the same time, a broad range of activities lets individuals find the ones that resonate best with them. Once they get their feet wet with one thing, they'll likely be drawn to others.

Set clear goals and a time limit:

Spoonheim points out that many public health initiatives drag on for years in obscurity, but the Vitality Project generated energy because it has clear beginning and endpoints and a measurable goal: some 2,000 enrollees each adding a projected two years on average to their lifespan, as measured by the online Vitality Compass.

This clarity adds power, says project volunteer Cathy Purdie, director of marketing and strategic development at Trail's Travel Center, a large truck stop and restaurant east of town. Referring to the infrastructure changes recommended to the city by walkability expert Dan Burden, she adds that "normally it would take us up to four years to add that many sidewalks. But I believe we'll do it by the end of this year. A powerful goal and vision scrap ordinary timelines."

Get a go-to guy or gal:

Spoonheim's role as the coordinator of the project's many activities has been crucial to its success, says Simonsen. "He keeps the wires from getting crossed and makes sure all the activities send the same message." She suggests that your project manager be someone from outside the community who understands how towns work—like Spoonheim, a former Saint Paul city planner. "An outsider is able to challenge you in ways that a local won't," she says. "And he or she won't be carrying any local baggage."

Pick a great leadership team:

A key to getting buy-in from as many sectors of the community as possible is creating a leadership team that's broad in scope as well as fired up about the project. The 18-member Albert Lea team represents city government, the chamber of commerce, the local hospital, the parks and recreation department, community education, and other areas. "Make sure your team says to the public that this is a community-wide project, not just an initiative of city government," says Simonsen. Spoonheim adds that private-sector employers, who struggle with employee health insurance costs, are likely to respond with great interest.

Appoint "ambassadors":

Designate local volunteers who consult with the leadership team and then fan out into the community to talk up the project, recruit participants, and answer questions. "Like the leadership team, the ambassadors need to represent many different sectors of the community," says volunteer coordinator Carol Wolter, a retired social worker, "and you should do your best to match them with parts of the project that excite them, whether it's outreach to churches or connecting with restaurants to encourage them to add or publicize vegetarian options."

Make the most of the media:

Minnesota AARP communications director Amy McDonough points out that one of the earliest buy-ins to the project was from the town's newspaper, the Albert Lea Tribune. It not only covered the project regularly, but printed support materials for its official launch. ("But they kept their independence too," she says. "They recently editorialized against the cost of some of the infrastructure changes we're proposing.") The town's two radio stations also cooperated, with the AM station providing a 20-minute Vitality Project show every Tuesday featuring project leaders and experts.

Get buy-in from schools:

Thanks to school programs early on, kids got excited about changing eating and walking habits and promoted the project at home. "My girls, nine and ten, became the better-eating and less-TV-watching cops," says Simonsen. Cathy Purdie's son Cordé, a member of his junior high's student council, distributed sign-up pledge packets at school, along with the blue rubber bracelets that have become the Vitality Project's membership markers. (They're inscribed with the Japanese phrase hara hachi bu, "eight-tenths of the belly," which Okinawans use to remind themselves to stop eating when they're eighty percent full.)

Add experts:

Outside experts, who consulted with the city on improving its walkability and getting better food in vending machines while encouraging residents to add purpose and activity to their lives were key players, says Spoonheim. "They add vital credibility and value; people pay attention to them." City manager Victoria Simonsen believes that while the experts don't need to be nationally famous, it helps if most aren't local—"You always pay more heed to the outside consultant."

Keep it coming:

"There's something new happening every week, practically every day," says Cathy Purdie. "It keeps people interested and energetic." Workshops, cooking classes, kickoffs of new initiatives, and celebrations of successes crowd the Albert Lea calendar.

Start walking clubs:

One of the most popular project initiatives is the "walking moai," a hybrid of AARP's walking program and the moai, a group of friends who support one another throughout life in Okinawa. Albert Lea walking moais are groups of neighbors who regularly walk together to a destination—a church, grocery store, place of employment, or other familiar goal. "We emphasize regular walking to significant destinations," says Spoonheim, "because we want to make walking a way of life, not a mode of exercise."

Leaders convened a public meeting and encouraged attendees to group together by neighborhood and time-of-day availability. Then each group was given a list of twenty typical destinations in each neighborhood, and the groups chose. One group has added allure to their walks by stopping at a member's house each week for a tipple of "moaitinis."

Catch the walking school bus:

Another favorite among Albert Lea's newly energized pedestrians is the walking school bus, a gaggle of kids who walk to school together under adult supervision. For information on this idea, which comes from the Partnership for a Walkable America, visit www.walkingschoolbus.org.

Get donations:

A makeover like this has real costs—your project manager may need a salary for what may be a full-time job for the project's duration, and there needs to be a reasonably sized support staff for him or her. Visiting experts will need hotel rooms and meals, and public events may require food. But the lion's share of the work is by volunteers, and "you can get a lot donated if the project generates enough interest," says Simonsen. "A national nut company has given us a lot of peanuts, and a grocery store donated 50 pounds of grapes."

But I'm on My Own!

If you just can't turn your town around, or you live in a city too big for the Albert Lea model to be easily workable, there are plenty of things you can do on a small scale. Albert Leans have discovered that seemingly minor changes in their daily routine can add up to the project's goal of "making the healthy thing the easy thing" when they're understood as part of a real commitment to health and longevity:

Use ten-inch plates—they look full with less food. (This was suggested by Brian Wansink, former executive director of the Department of Agriculture's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, author of the best-seller Mindless Eating, and one of the project's visiting experts.)
Throw away the remote—and walk to the TV to change channels. (People used to do this! Really!)
Use a wooden spoon instead of an electric mixer.
Store snacks in small bags instead of the bigger bags they came in.
Buy a bike.
Eat longevity-enhancing foods, like dark-green leafy vegetables, soy, and nuts.

And there are lots more tips and tricks on the Vitality Project's Active Home Checklist, the Home Eating Environment Checklist, and the Longevity Foods List. Joel Spoonheim suggests that even when you're adopting these small-scale changes, you "buddy-up" with a few others, creating a micro-project in which there's plenty of mutual support and mutual accountability.

Whether you're promoting these ideas town-wide or adopting them for your family and a circle of friends, experts and participants agree that easy and fun ought to be your watchwords. These makeover strategies aren't about guilt, struggle, or sacrifice—they're about a new way of living that, as Albert Lea is proving, comes naturally.

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