Active Southern West Virginia expands into Boone County – The Coal Valley News

The Active Southern West Virginia nonprofit organization has announced it has expanded its programming to Kanawha and Boone counties.

Having served Fayette, Raleigh, Nicholas and Summers counties for the past five years, Active SWV has also been working with neighboring communities along the Route 3 corridor and the Upper Kanawha River valley to widen its outreach.

Active SWV provides wellness activities for the residents of southern West Virginia, offering programs led by trained volunteers within communities where they live. These programs are intended to improve health outcomes in underserved communities, workplaces and schools and attract new businesses and jobs to the region.

Active SWVs evidence-based programs include Workplace Wellness, Community Captains, Kids Run Clubs, and Bike/Walk SWV. Supported by the New River Gorge Regional Development Authority, the West Virginia Development Office, the West Virginia Bureau of Public Health, West Virginia University, and the Appalachian Regional Commission, ActiveSWV has provided technical assistance and training to more than 250 volunteers. The volunteers lead their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and families toward living a healthier lifestyle.

The West Virginia Development Office supports the expansion of Active SWV programming into Kanawha and Boone counties, WVDO Executive Director Michael Graney said in a media release. The WVDO recognizes the connection between a healthy workforce and job creation. Active SWVs focus on improving community health will help attract new industry and diversify our states economy.

As a member of the ASWV Board of Directors and the Ware Distinguished Professor in the College of Physical Activity and Sport Sciences at West Virginia University, I am pleased to support the outstanding work of Active Southern WV, and its expansion into Boone and Kanawha counties, said Eloise Elliott, Ph.D., in the release. As a partner with our Center for Active WV in CPASS, my colleagues and I find the work and programming of ASWV to be an outstanding model of community engagement to promote physical activity opportunities and participation that truly encompasses the entire lifespan children to older adults.

ASWV programming targets many societal sectors identified in the National and West Virginia Physical Activity Plans, including education, business/industry, health care, parks/recreation/fitness/sport, public health, and volunteers/nonprofits, Elliott said. Healthy citizens of southern West Virginia lead to a healthy workforce and growing economy, and I am honored to be a part of a thriving and innovative organization striving to help southern West Virginians make physical activity and a healthy lifestyle a priority in their lives.

Healthy people and healthy places must be priorities for West Virginia now and in the future. Partnering with Active Southern WV to implement worksite wellness programs in Boone and Kanawha counties allows our state to move toward better outcomes and positive change, West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources Prevention Policy Senior Manager and Wellness Program Coordinator James Vance said.

For more information about the expansion into the UKV or other matters relating to the organization, contact Active SWV Executive Director Melanie Seilier at info@activeswv.com or visit the organizations website, http://www.activeswv.com.

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Active Southern West Virginia expands into Boone County - The Coal Valley News

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