WHEAT receives $10,000 to lead Healthy Communities Initiative in Clinton

January 11, 2007 - The Massachusetts Partnership for Healthy Communities, a program of The Medical Foundation, Inc., awarded WHEAT Community Services a $10,000 grant for the Clinton Community Partners Project. The Clinton Community Partners Project sought $10,000 from The Medical Foundation to develop a comprehensive plan to improve the health of people in our community. Since 2001, the group has been meeting on and off to discuss a broad range of health issues within the community, but we recognize our community planning effort needs to be revitalized; we need to include more people in the process; and we need to re-evaluate the issues that are preventing Clinton from becoming a more wide-spread Health Community.

The group consists of a wide-range of community partners including representatives from:

• WHEAT Community Services
• CHNA9
• Central MA Center for Healthy Communities
• Clinton Adult Learning Center
• Clinton Board of Health
• Clinton Community and Economic Development
• Clinton Hospital/UMass Memorial
• Clinton Senior Center
• Clinton Parent Child Home Program
• Clinton Police Department
• Clinton Public School System
• Clinton Town Administrator
• Community Partnership for Children
• Community Healthlinks Lipton Center
• NYPRO
• Polus Center for Social and Economic Development
• St. John's Gym
• Wachusett Chamber of Commerce
• WHEAT Community Services

The planning process will engage a wide-range of people in the community by being more inclusive; identify the community vision; evaluate community assets and resources; and prioritize and develop strategies to address these results. We will hold focus groups, develop and distribute surveys, and set up easels in high traffic areas in the town to allow people to respond to the question "What is your vision for the community?" Once this information is collected, the group will review new and existing data collected, identify the issues raised by people in our community, identify the strengths and weaknesses by reviewing human and natural resources in town, and set goals to help the community build on its assets and become healthier.

"I'm very excited that WHEAT has been selected to be the lead agency for this grant, and I have the opportunity to work with so many great people on this initiative. This type of stuff is very exciting to me because it's an opportunity to really change a community" said Jodi Breidel, executive director of WHEAT.

"This is an extremely significant award", said Don Lowe, Director of Community and Economic Development for the Town of Clinton. "This grant will enable WHEAT to focus on health issues that are vitally important to our communities, as well as playing a leading role in a very important segment of Clinton's Master Plan process."

Anyone interested in participating in this initiative should contact Jodi at WHEAT by phone at 978-365-6349 or email at jbreidel@wheatcommunity.net