Raising healthy kids starts at home,
follows children to school and
extends out to the rest of the community.
The Working on Wellness (WOW!) Coalition brings together organizations and people to help kids stay healthy. We support their work to find and implement solutions that encourage healthy habits where kids live, learn, pray and play.
The WOW Coalition is one of ten North Carolina coalitions funded through Healthy People, Healthy Carolinas to implement and evaluate the impact of evidence-based interventions. Healthy People, Healthy Carolinas is a bold initiative of The Duke Endowment, which aims to improve community health outcomes with a focus on nutrition, physical activity and prevention of chronic disease.
The WOW Coalition has adopted the overarching goal of improving child health and wellbeing in Granville County, North Carolina, through health promotion efforts targeting nutrition and physical activity. Poor nutrition, obesity, and physical inactivity have been connected to poor school performance as well as chronic conditions that impact health across the lifespan. By targeting interventions during childhood, health promoting behaviors are more easily adopted and maintained, thereby improving health across the lifespan and avoiding adverse health outcomes in adulthood.
Participating organizations include:
- Granville Vance Public Health
- Granville Health System
- NC Cooperative Extension Service
- Northern Piedmont Community Care
- Granville County Public Schools
- Franklin Granville Vance Smart Start
- Oxford Housing Authority
- Boys and Girls Club of North Central NC
- Triangle North Healthcare Foundation
- Green Rural Redevelopment Organization
Our school partners include:
- Butner-Stem Elementary School
- C.G. Credle Elementary School
- Creedmoor Elementary School of the Arts
- Joe Toler-Oak Hill Elementary School
- Mount Energy Elementary School
- Stovall-Shaw Elementary School
- Tar River Elementary School
- West Oxford Elementary School
- Wilton Elementary School
- JF Webb High School of Health & Life Sciences
The WOW Coalition meets on the 4th Wednesday of each month, except in December. Meetings are held from 12 – 1:30 pm at the Granville Vance Public Health conference room located at 101 Hunt Drive, Oxford, NC 27565. All meetings are open to the public.
For additional information about the WOW Coalition and its activities, please contact:
Shaq Davis
WOW Community Facilitator
919-693-2141 x297
SDavis@gvdhd.org
Current WOW priorities include working to:
- Build, strengthen, and sustain our coalition to target primary prevention of lifestyle-related chronic diseases that disproportionately burden rural communities
- Empower families to guide the development of policies, programs, and environments that support the development of the whole child
- Establish WOW! Teams in all elementary schools within Granville County Public Schools, which will work cooperatively to implement the CATCH program
- Implement other evidence-based strategies that encourage good nutrition and regular physical activity for children under the age of 12, with a new focus on those under 5
- Develop policy, system and environmental changes that support child health and wellbeing within Granville County
- Collect, analyze, and disseminate data that sheds light on community needs and assets, supports funding requests to address identified needs, and adds evidence to inform rural public health implementation strategies
- Identify avenues to expand this work to neighboring Vance County, based on recent data collection, supported by Triangle North Healthcare Foundation, which indicates an even greater magnitude of childhood obesity in Vance County, when compared to Granville County, and the need for immediate action towards childhood obesity prevention in both counties
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