The Healthy Places Healthy People trails project completed their trail summit on Friday, April 26, 2024 at the Navajo Technical University Hospitality room in Crownpoint, New Mexico. The event was jam-packed with various presentations and panel discussions from community members of the participating Eastern Navajo Agency communities. The event began with a welcome address and opening prayer by Leonard Perry, Vice-President of the Crownpoint Chapter House, followed by presentations from Dine’ College public health students and Dr. Richard Kozoll on the “benefits of physical activity on mental and brain health”. The Crownpoint Office of Dine’ Youth program led an active break activity during the mid-morning with stretches and team building exercises. Daniel Vandever of the K’E Community Trails project presented on their trail work initiatives in Crownpoint with some planned ideas for the future with their New Mexico Trails Plus grant they received for the upcoming year. Mr. Vandever was able to lead the participants on one of their trails to talk about the various tools involved in trail building, as well as maintenance and sustaining trails in communities. A delicious lunch was served by the Navajo Technical University cafeteria. Following lunch, the Healthy Places Healthy People communities were invited to sit on a panel to talk about their trails in their communities. Community members discussed their current status of their trails, successes and challenges, incentives, activities they plan to have on their trails, and technical assistance needs. The community discussions were amazing! People were able to ask questions and share ideas with one another. The networking was fabulous. After the two hour panel discussions, the Healthy Places Healthy People staff presented on a toolkit that is being developed for the project. The toolkit is based on the HPHP experience with working with the eastern Navajo agency communities to build new or improve existing trails. It is the intent that anyone can use this toolkit to build trails in their communities. The toolkit contains information on coalition building, learning about Navajo Nation guidelines, communication, and much more. Crownpoint Service Unit’s “Just Move It” team presented on their initiatives for the project following the toolkit presentation. “Just Move It” (JMI) has begun including more bike activities, in addition to their fun walk and run for the summer. The first JMI event in the eastern Navajo agency will be on June 13th at the Becenti Chapter House and will run throughout several communities this summer. JMI will conclude at the Crownpoint Office of Dine’ Youth on September 11, 2024. The final presentation at the HPHP trail summit was “Little Bellas: Mentoring on Mountain Bikes”. This organization is encouraging young girls to be more physically active through riding bikes to combat health related diseases in Native communities. They are open to working with everyone in our Navajo communities and offer loaner bikes and helmets when teaching girls how to ride their bicycles by modeling healthy and safe habits.
The Healthy Places Healthy People team would like to thank everyone for making this trail summit possible. It was a very successful event. We hope you were able to learn and network with other communities. A big thank you to the Navajo Technical University hospitality room services for welcoming us to have our summit there! The space was excellent. A big shout out to the Navajo Technical University for live-streaming the summit on their YouTube channel. There were additional folks who watched the summit online. In conclusion, this summit was successful because of the Healthy Places Healthy communities that attended and participated in the summit for the entire day. Thank you all for your collaborations and hard work! The summit was sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and the New Mexico Department of Health.
For more information, contact Sheldon Benally at sbenally2@salud.unm.edu or visit the Healthy People Healthy Places webpage.