Getting Mississippians moving is more than just a slogan and a walking campaign.
It's a start for a healthier, fitter population in the state.
The Mississippi Gulf Coast Sports Commission used a pilot program at Ocean Springs High School earlier this year to show that a health and fitness event to increase quality of life could be successful.
The program, called CLAW, which stands for Creating Leaders in Academics and Wellness, is used to motivate students, businesses and the public to make good health and fitness a major part of their lives and develop good health habits.
Now the commission is expanding it to four quarterly events beginning in March 2009, which will combine the pilot fitness challenge with health checks and other opportunities to improve fitness of the students and adults.
And it won't be just for students. A sister program will be introduced in the work place to continue the work CLAW has begun.
The work-place program is called BLOC, for Businesses Leading Our Cause. The program is expected to take what is learned from CLAW and reinforce that in adults in the work place for a long-term healthy lifestyle.
And to keep things interesting, a health and fitness challenge is planned quarterly at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum with prizes awarded for improvement.
"We did a lot of research on companies and found the Cat Club Challenge" said Scott Ratcliff, Sports Commission executive director.
The Sports Commission partnered with Parisi Speed School to bring the Cat Club Challenge to the Coast.
Already developed as a multi-level - one through eight - program that measures health and fitness, the Cat Club Challenge is used to help people monitor and improve their progress and overall health on a quarterly basis.
"If we do it quarterly and benchmark it, it gives them something to work for to improve," Ratcliff said.
Of course, community outreach programs such as this need funding to be successful, and the commission has outlined several levels of sponsorship it plans to take to Coast businesses.
In a time when the focus is on a country with people vastly overweight and needing to get moving - myself included - the Sports Commission's initiative to get children thinking of fitness early on and then reinforcing it in the work place and as adults can lead only to good things down the road.
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