Jen Patrick, community health education specialist with Mahoning County Public Health, is seen with a coconut coir brick that is wetted, broken up and used as soil for gardening in small containers. Beneath it is a black “growing bag” that also can be used to grow vegetables. The items were given to Sebring residents during a health fair Thursday in the village. The event was part of longterm county health department project to increase healthy eating and active living in the village. (Photo by Ed Runyan)
SEBRING — Mahoning County Public Health, the county health department, is finishing up a year of assessments to determine the best ways to partner with Sebring residents to engage in healthy eating and active living.
The health department received a “Healthy Eating, Active Living” (HEAL) grant that enabled its community health education specialists to work with village residents to create a plan to improve the health of people in the community.
Jen Patrick, the lead community health education specialist on the project, met with 15 to 20 people with a connection to healthy eating and active living, including village leaders, non-profit leaders, business leaders and community volunteers.
That included people such as village manager Tim Gabrelcik and Tonya Dean, who runs the Sebring food-insecurity organization Harvesting Hope and runs the Almost Home Event Center in Sebring.
The many discussions helped Patrick learn what programs and policies are in place to promote healthy eating and activity living. The community led the decision making about how to move the community forward, she said.
Patrick and Gabrelcik eventually looked over the ideas provided to determine what the top priorities of Sebring would be. They listed healthy eating strategies and healthy living strategies.
Among the top priorities for healthy eating was to start a farmers market because the village does not have a grocery store, Patrick said.
The healthy living strategies were playgrounds, trail improvement, better supports for active commuting such as biking and walking, and increasing public transit.
“Then we took the strategies to the community in April and went to five community events and presented those strategies to the public, and we let the citizens vote,” she said. The No. 1 idea was a farmers market with a close second being increasing public transit.
The decision was made to go forward first with a downtown farmers market with a plan to start it next summer. Patrick said the public wanted something easily accessible by walking, “and they were just looking for more community events, community connectedness,” compared to driving to other nearby communities, she said.
Patrick said it’s common for a farmers market to expand into more than just fresh fruits and vegetables into things like crafting vendors, honey, candles and soaps.
“It not only gives them a chance to shop locally for things they need, like fresh and healthy foods but also creates a sense of community, like a social event, something they can look forward to. They get to see people and talk to people, catch up with friends in the community,” Patrick said.
“It also really helps out with mental health, being outdoors, having an opportunity to socialize. In various communities that start these farmers markets, they get bigger and it becomes an event,” Patrick said.
The HEAL grant, which came from the Ohio Department of Health, runs out at the end of this month. But the health department obtained a five-year Creating Healthy Communities (CHC) grant from the Ohio Department of Health and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that begins Oct. 1. It will be used to implement the goals the community identified.
One way CHC grant will probably be used is to hire someone to run the farmers market. Another is to move forward with additional public transit options. That is an active-living strategy aimed at helping Sebring residents get to other nearby communities that have more grocery options, Patrick said.
The CHC grant is for the entire county, so those funds can also be used elsewhere in the county. “When our work is done in Sebring, we may be going to other communities,” Patrick said.
On Thursday, the healthcare organization CareSource hosted a health fair with help from the county health department at the Sebring Fire Station. Vaccines were administered and various types of health screenings were provided.
The health department partnered with the Ohio State Extension Service, which planned to hold a healthy cooking demonstration Thursday of a meal made with everyday ingredients that do not require expensive cooking tools to make and ingredients that can be purchased at a dollar store, Patrick said.
“We want to make healthy eating easy and accessible,” Patrick said. “Some people may not have a very complete kitchen. When you don’t have the resources, it’s easier to buy a box of macaroni and cheese because it’s easy,” she said. Not having access to reliable transportation is also a factor affecting the healthfulness of their diet, she said.
Also distributed Thursday were samples of a healthy apple pecan salad. The health department also handed out about 100 recipe cards to help people make the salad, and the health department provided other health information.
There are agencies helping Sebring residents with food needs, including the Youngstown based ACTION (Alliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing our Neighborhoods) with its Mobile Market, which comes to Sebring once per month.
“But they need additional support,” she said of Sebring residents. “The village is underserved for food. The last grocery store there closed quite a few years ago,” Patrick said.
