Creating the State Plan

On April 28 and 29, 2010, more than 100 people from across Montana gathered to draft the 2011 – 2020 Montana Nutrition and Physical Activity State Plan to Prevent Obesity.  This statewide meeting brought together partners who had not historically thought of themselves as agents of change in the field of public health, and who had little or no history of working with one another.  The obesity epidemic is caused by a multitude of interconnected factors, however, and reversing the epidemic will require action in multiple settings.  At this meeting, traditional public health advocates such as state, local and tribal health department personnel were joined by new, non-traditional partners from agencies as diverse as the Montana Association of Planners, the Alternative Energy Resources Organization, the Montana Department of Agriculture, the Montana Chamber of Commerce, the Montana Recreation and Parks Association, the Montana Chapter of the American institute of Architects, Head Start programs, Girls and Boys clubs, Montana State University Extension Services, the Montana Office of Public Instruction, the Western Transportation Institute, and many others.  (See XXX for a complete list of partners in the planning process.)

Prior to the face-to-face meeting, participants were asked to select one workgroup in which to participate.  Each workgroup was designed to address one of the following settings:

  • Early Childhood Care and Education
  • Worksites
  • Food Access and Outlets
  • Built Environment
  • Healthcare
  • Schools / School-Age Youth
  • Social/Cultural Environments

Workgroup members were provided with the latest recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Institute of Medicine, the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, and other authoritative sources.  Recommendations described evidence-based strategies and promising practices that could be implemented to improve opportunities for healthy eating, physical activity, and obesity prevention in targeted settings.  Workgroup members were invited to participate in a conference call prior to the planning meeting to discuss these strategies.

At the planning meeting, workgroup members were asked to select or develop strategies that would address one or more of the following behavior change goals:

  • Increasing physical activity
  • Decreasing sugar-sweetened beverage consumption
  • Increasing breastfeeding initiation, duration and exclusivity
  • Decreasing time spent viewing TV
  • Increasing fruit and vegetable consumption
  • Decreasing consumption of energy-dense foods

The rationale for each of these suggested behavior changes is described in detail later in this State Plan. 

At the face-to-face planning meeting, and on follow-up conference calls, workgroup members agreed upon specific strategies that could, or should, be implemented in targeted settings in Montana.  As possible, they also determined who would implement the strategies, and when.  Their work created the foundation of the 2011-2020 Montana Nutrition and Physical Activity State Plan to prevent Obesity.