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Community Wellness Hubs should advance health and wellness across seven interdependent and interconnected dimensions of well-being — cultural, economic, emotional, environmental, intellectual, physical and social. Learn from these seven conference sessions related to health and wellness — one for each of the seven dimensions of well-being — at the 2023 NRPA Annual Conference.
Emotional
Hot Topic! Supporting Staff Well-Being
Speakers: Allison Colman and Daniel Hatcher
Join your peers and NRPA staff to discuss the well-being of staff! Learn about NRPA’s commitment to the Mental Health Excellence in the Workplace initiative, which calls for a workplace culture shift to address mental health stigma and support employee well-being, and explore making your own.
Physical
Active Parks! Increasing Physical Activity and the Use of Parks, Trails and Greenways
Speakers: Allison Colman, Kaitlin Graff and Teresa Morrissey
Access to parks and recreation increases physical activity levels while promoting other health and social benefits. The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommended park, trail and greenway infrastructure interventions with additional activities to increase physical activity. Learn how NRPA, as part of the CDC’s Active People, Healthy NationSM initiative, translated this recommendation into the Active Parks! Implementation Guide with actionable steps to create equitable, healthy and active-friendly communities.
Social
Aging Unbound: Innovative Strategies Through Parks and Recreation
Speakers: Victoria Boschert, Barbara Johnson and Tiff Cunin
Parks and recreation is vital to ensuring everyone can age without bounds! As the aging population becomes more diverse, it is important that organizations that serve older adults learn how to center equity.
Intellectual
Putting Equity Into Practice
Speakers: Maureen Neumann and Tiffany Young
Talking about equity in your park and recreation agency is great, but how do you operationalize this work to create systems-level change? Tiffany Young of Think Equity will walk participants through the power of putting equity into policy and practices, creating a foundational shift for local parks and recreation and the communities they serve.
Environmental
Design, Evaluate, Adapt: Resources for Maximizing the Climate and Health Benefits of Parks
Speakers: Taj Schottland and Kristen Weil (Additional speakers to be added)
Representatives from Trust for Public Land and People Lab will highlight the latest science around the climate and health benefits associated with parks; showcase ParkServe’s recently updated and publicly available multi-benefit framework for identifying where parks are most needed; and discuss lessons learned from three cities where diverse partnerships are building climate-smart parks and measuring impact through replicable evaluation protocols.
Cultural
Local Food Access: Justice, Wellness and Community in Parks
Speakers: j. olu baiyewu, Christian Joy, Dr. Erica Holloman-Hill and Amina Robinson
Explore unique City of Atlanta park sites and learn about organizations that steward and manage them by navigating the intersections of partnership and collaboration between community, nonprofit, private sector and municipal participants. Topics will include facilitating culturally relevant food growing and distribution practices, community engagement and education, and more.
Economic
Cultivating Young Leaders
Speakers: Cristin Chavez-Smith, Nicole Mentz and Diana Delgado
Our work cannot be done without our youth and young adult staff members, interns and volunteers. By seeing them as leaders, we can cultivate the next generation of leaders.
For a complete list of education sessions, click here.
Cina Makres is a Program Specialist at NRPA.