Healthy Lifestyles Community Council

Making it easier to make healthy choices in Kansas City takes all of us. That is the focus of the Healthy Lifestyles Initiative (HLI). The HLI Working Group has met regularly over the last two years to expand the reach, adoption, and effectiveness of this effort. Starting in January 2015, a Planning Committee began meeting to broaden our efforts and get more community engagement.

This group is not a typical group—in addition to representatives from community programs and health care professionals, there are members of the public. The structure will not be that of a traditional board but rather a structure that allows shared leadership to oversee the key functions of planning, evaluating results, finding needed resources, advocating for policy and environmental changes and sharing our actions and progress.

Key principles for the Healthy Lifestyles Community Council:

• Actions are driven by what gets us to our desired results—more Kansas Citians making healthier choices, at a healthy weight and enjoying a healthy life.
• People from all parts of the community working together for the same goals.
• We will measure our progress, learn what works, learn what we could do better, and change our plans when we need to.
• The community will weigh in on decisions to be made. We want to hear from all voices.
• Power is shared. We are all responsible for the results.
• We choose group leaders based on who can help us reach our goals.
• We will share the work we are doing without hiding anything.
• We will use social media to help us share what we are doing and get input on our actions.