Blue Cross foundation partners with 6 east Idaho cities to build more active communities

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) - Six east Idaho cities are learning how to build more dynamic, healthy communities.

Ammon city leaders among others met with the experts Wednesday to see how they measure up. 

"What we found is the most successful communities are ones where they make active living part of daily life," Public health and engineering expert Mark Fenton said. "Rather than I've got to consciously decide to go out and exercise, go to the gym, go for a run."

Fenton tells us populations are more physically active pay less for health care and are a better economic investment for businesses.

Part of making a more active community starts with the way the city is designed.

On the tour of Ammon, he showed the city what they've done well and how they can improve.

"It's really caused us to change our perspective," Ammon City Clerk Kristina Buchan said. "We think of community health as things like access to doctor's offices or making sure that there's nurses in schools. But it's about so much more than that. It's about creating a community where people have somewhere to live and have somewhere to walk."

Blue Cross of Idaho is also granting the six cities $20,000 to invest in public health and building more active communities.

"Our goal is to have a healthy community that's both physical and mental. We learned today that we are quite a bit heavier over the last 30 years," Pocatello Mayor Brian Blad said. "Kids aren't getting out and being active and they're not they're not give they don't have the opportunities that we had as we were growing up. And hopefully we can foster that kind of an activity for people"

While building a better community does take investment, there cost effective ways to start right now. 

"We talked about how you can make street crossings safer with what are called curb extensions or bump outs at the intersections," Fenton said. "But you don't have to do that with concrete and asphalt. That can be done with temporary planters and things called vertical delineate or a flexible post paint."