Public Health Week
Dear Editor: It’s National Public Health Week. One of the focuses this week is on safe and healthy communities – communities like Sitka.
The Sitka Health Summit steering committee would like to take some time this week to recognize and sincerely thank all those who have given of their time and talents to make the health summit process a success.
For the past six years Sitkans have come together each fall to choose a few projects out of many brainstormed ideas in order to make Sitka a healthier place to live and work.
We would like to highlight some of your successes this week and thank everyone who helped these excellent goals become sweet realities.
Thank you for the excellent idea and inspired action to create the Sitka Farmers Market. This community building event is great in and of itself and it seems to have contributed to the local food movement which has really taken off in recent years.
Health Summit volunteers put Sitka on the map as the first bike friendly community in Alaska and Sitka bikers are safer for it.
The Park Prescriptions Program has encouraged Sitkans to get outside rain or shine in our beautiful Sitka National Historical Park. Join the WISEWOMAN Program and your Sitka public health nurses every Wednesday at noon to walk through the park and get your ‘‘prescription’’ card stamped.
The award-winning Fish to Schools Program has brought locally caught FRESH fish to our children’s lunches at Keet Gooshi Heen, Blatchley Middle School, Pacific High School, Sitka High School and Mt. Edgecumbe High School.
This Sitka Conservation Society project highlights the journey a salmon takes from the ocean to your plate and why it matters to care about your environment.
Supporting the Hames Center was selected as a priority two years in a row and it’s exciting to see how strong, sustainable and beneficial the center has become.
Remember, ‘‘exercise is medicine.’’
The community rallied around a creative process to highlight respect as an alternative to violence in our lives. The beautiful Choose Respect mural on the front of Blatchley Middle School has acted as a focal point to discuss the unfortunate but very real violence we see in our lives and those of our neighbors.
Looking ahead – this year the Sitka Health Summit has several enticing projects in the works and we need your help.
Making Sitka a walk-friendly community is one focus. Walk Friendly Communities is a national awards program that developed an application process to help communities improve their walkability. This process uses the five E’s – education, encouragement, engineering, enforcement and evaluation – to help communities learn their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to walkability. Another project will be looking at ideas to revitalizing downtown boosts the economic health and the quality of life in a community. The third is the Sitka Community Food Assessment project which is launching a community survey to look at food security and resiliency in Sitka.
Want to be involved? Check out www.sitkahealthsummit.com for more information.
Sitka Health Summit
Steering Committee
Cleaning Crew
Dear Editor: The high school soccer teams did a wonderful community service job this weekend in support of the downtown revitalization project.
They picked up about 28 big bags of litter and recyclables strewn across Sitka’s downtown. They didn’t ask or receive payment. Instead, they took time out of their weekend and volunteered as a way to say thank you to all the businesses and people who have helped the Sitka High School boys and girls teams.
Your effort and example have made a big difference and the downtown revitalization group is very appreciative. Our downtown looks better and is healthier because of your hard work. Just think of the hundreds of cigarette butts that got picked up Sunday. Each discarded butt takes 12 years to break down, all the while leaching toxic elements such as cadmium, lead and arsenic into soil and waterways. On top of that a huge percentage of Sitka’s litter ends up polluting the ocean that we depend on so heavily. As far as we are concerned, the players, parents and volunteers who made the Spring Spruce Up a success deserve a round of applause.
Gunalcheesh and good luck with the rest of your season,
Doug Osborne, Bob Medinger
and Tess Giant,
Revitalize Sitka, Creating a Vibrant Downtown, workgroup
