Introduction

Program Objectives: The University of Kentucky (UK) College of Agriculture, Food and Environment launched a fitness app in 2019 with the goal of helping Kentuckians improve their health. This app went into development in 2014 as part of a grant received from the Centers for Disease Control in Prevention in order to help lower the obesity rates in Kentucky Counties with obesity rates of 40% or above. The app has now completed development and is used by the University of Kentucky Nutrition Education Program and Family & Consumer Sciences (FCS) Extension Agents to make supportive tools for developing healthier habits more accessible to individuals of the commonwealth. With this tool available and the growing need to combat obesity related chronic illness in Eastern Kentucky the Agents of the region coordinated programing using the FitBlue tools with 3 main objectives.

1. To provide more accessible opportunities for measurable fitness progress through new technology (FitBlue App).
2. To promote healthier habits through supportive communities such as “Walking Groups” provided by local Extension Services
3. And to promote maintainable healthier habit development through education in healthier eating, safe exercise, and mindfulness.

Target Audience: The primary audience for the combined efforts of Agents in this program were Kentuckians living in Eastern Kentucky, including the Appalachian region. FitBlue is however, geared towards all Kentuckians but is the perfect fit for any individual on the go who may not have time to attend traditional extension programming. Through technology, Agents in the Eastern Kentucky region and beyond are able to reach a wider audience than an in-person program and have the opportunity to extend the reach of extension research based programing as a whole.

Relevancy of Program: The FitBlue app takes a holistic approach to health. The app includes a fitness tracker, nutrition tracker, and has other features such as a farmer’s market locator, food bank locator, and workout plans/videos for all ability levels. Users are also able to receive Plate it Up! Kentucky Proud recipes and other educational publications that are developed by UK specialists. Family & Consumer Sciences extension agents through the University of Kentucky Cooperative Extension Service also used this app throughout 2019 to host walking challenges in which participants could compete by logging their daily steps for a set period of time. FitBlue allows extension to appeal to today’s audience like never before as it can instantaneously give up-to-date research based information to participants at the click of a button.

Program Description

Content: The FitBlue app through UK is innovative in the aspect that it provides a singular location for all county-based extension walking challenges. Most county-based FCS programs in Kentucky hosted annual walking programs through their offices, however the method for hosting these challenges varied drastically. Some counties would host in-person walking clubs while others went as far as to develop websites to try and find an easier way to collect data from these challenges. The University of Kentucky saw the need for a centralized platform to host these challenges but also took it a step further by offering a multitude of other features such as the farmers market locator, Plate it Up! Kentucky Proud recipe catalog, food bank locator, and workout plans/videos.

Delivery Methods Described: Walking challenges for the University of Kentucky Extension program are now offered through the FitBlue app. This app can be accessed on any smartphone device and is free to download through the Apple App Store and on Google Play. In order to host a walking, challenge FCS extension agents simply need to email the university with challenge dates and a sign-up period. From there the extension agent is provided with a challenge name and access code that users can use to sign up in the FitBlue app. Users must log in daily to enter their step count and view their position on the leaderboard. Throughout the challenge period the user also receives push notifications on their smartphones reminding them to log their steps and also giving them tips for how to get active. Participants also receive weekly emails with encouragement and health tips to encourage them to keep up the good work. At the conclusion of the program the FCS agent is able to contact the University to pull stats on participants from the program and to gather information such as the number of individual’s that were in the challenge and the total number of steps completed by each contestant. This streamlines the process for measuring the impact of the challenge in each county and makes the program easier to evaluate. Agents were also free to host workshops and/or walking support groups throughout walking challenges that are supplemental to the FitBlue app, depending on the needs and interest of the Agent’s community. During these supplemental workshops agents prepared recipes to ample form the app, practices the techniques for safe exercise as explained in the app, and provided a community for support for participants.  

Materials Developed: Each county was responsible for their own flyers for any walking challenge that was hosted. Examples of these flyers are presented in the supporting documentation. It was also the responsibility of the county to publicize the program and to answer questions regarding the challenge or the FitBlue app. If any technical issues were found the Agent was able to contact the University for troubleshooting. Furthermore, Agents in the Eastern Kentucky Region worked together to promote FitBlue and health in all of their respective counties however, Fitblue provides such a wide range of tools that it was up to each Agent to present the program in a way that best fit the needs of their cliental.

Program Impact

Evaluation Methods: All data for walking challenges are collected in the FitBlue app. This data can be accessed by the Extension Agent by contacting the University at the conclusion of the challenge. Information provided by the university includes the number of participants, the total number of steps, and demographic information on the contestants.

Instrument: The primary instrument used to measure the impact of walking programs is the total number of steps logged during each challenge. Steps are easily converted into miles and are a 

great way to gauge the amount of activity that each FitBlue walking challenge helped create.

Results/Impact: The team entering for this award consists of some of the District 1 (Eastern Kentucky Region) counties within the University of Kentucky’s Cooperative Extension service. During the app’s launch in 2019 seven counties in the District (Fleming, Greenup, Lawrence, 

Lewis, Martin, Menifee, and Pike counties) hosted walking challenges through the FitBlue app. Each of these seven challenges saw tremendous successes and impacts. These successes included reaching new audiences that have typically be difficult to reach (millennials, those who work during typical extension office hours, men, and more), giving them a positive experience wirth extension and accesses to our reached based information.  Additionally, programming through the FitBlue app lead to participants trying healthier Kentucky Proud foods including fruits and vegetables, as well as, new food preparation techniques (i.e. baking instead of frying). Programing throughout the region also provided support for participants to help insure that the habits they developed while using the app during a challenge can be maintained for long term personal healthy habits. Overall, the Eastern Kentucky collaborative effort for 2019 resulted in 149 contestants who, in total, logged over 21,043,911 steps or about 10,522 miles (which is about the same distance as walking from Richmond, VA to San Francisco, CA 3 and 2/3 times).

Plans for Expansion

In the future, the FitBlue app will be expanding current features to include geofencing push notifications. Geofencing notifications will allow users of the FitBlue application to earn rewards for visiting certain locations. This feature would be used in a multitude of ways but, most importantly could be used to encourage users to visit local extension programming to earn points towards any challenge in which they are enrolled.

The University of Kentucky would additionally like to expand the current user base of the FitBlue app to reach more individuals. Encouraging more county extension programs to take advantage of the application and utilize it for walking challenges. This would allow for more researched based information to be spread to clientele across the commonwealth and potentially across the nation.