For months LaVonda Tanner carefully wrote down every minute that her then-4-year-old son exercised. When he jumped on the trampoline, she wrote it down. When he attended T-ball practice, she wrote it down. When he went for a family walk, she wrote it down.

At the end of the school year little Wes was the winner of the Tiger Tracks program, having recorded more minutes of exercise than any other student.

Now a first grader at Washington-Wilkes Primary School, Wes still remembers many of the nutrition lessons he learned two years ago.

“You’ve gotta work your body out, that’s why gym’s my favorite class,” he says. “Fruits and vegetables are healthy. Sweets aren’t healthy. I’ve told Mama that I’ll only eat one sweet a day.”

The lessons Wes learned were part of a four-year research project led by Rebecca Mullis, head of the FACS Foods and Nutrition Department, and William Kanto Jr., chair of the pediatrics department at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta to determine if it’s possible to change an entire community’s views about nutrition and exercise.

Wilkes Wild About Wellness grew out of a meeting that occurred between the mayor and representatives of the two universities in 2000, Mullis recalls.

“Since Washington is central to Augusta and Athens, meetings between MCG and UGA are frequently held here,” Mullis says. “During one of those meetings Frank said, ‘I want you to tell us why more people die here than in the other counties around us.’”

With $500,000 in funding from the University System’s Board of Regents, the Georgia Center for Obesity and Related Disorders was formed. Mullis and Kanto put together a team of researchers who spent a year gathering data on Washington-Wilkes residents. What they found was shocking: 81 percent of the county was either obese or at risk of becoming obese. That figure compared with a state average of 59 percent and the national average of 65 percent.

Once they had their findings, Mullis, Kanto and the rest of the research team moved to the next phase of the study – finding ways to change those statistics.

“We decided to have quarterly meetings with the community steering committee and to ask, ‘What do you want us to do,’” Mullis says. “Past experience had shown us that to be successful this had to be a locally driven initiative.”

One of the first requests from the community was to establish a full-time staff position, someone who would be available whenever a resident needed information.

“We knew that whomever we hired had to have credibility in the community,” Mullis says. “It had to be someone who was well known and was respected.

That’s where Donna Hardy came in.

Hardy, who grew up in Washington-Wilkes and serves as a Wilkes County commissioner, is known throughout the county. In addition, she’s a seemingly unending font of energy.

“I’m an instigator,” Hardy says of herself and Wilkes Wild About Wellness was just the sort of intensive program that she loves.

During a tour of Washington—between greeting everyone she sees by name—Hardy points out many of the changes that have occurred since WWW began. She also points out those who participated in many of the activities held during the three years of the program.

“One of the first things the steering committee said was that we should work with the faith-based community,” Hardy says. “There are 150 churches in this community and churches have credibility.”

The pastor of First Baptist Church was an early convert to changes.

“John Childers’ doctor had told him he was going to die if he didn’t lose weight,” Hardy says. “He hired a professional dietitian and committed to one hour of physical activity a day.”

The result was that Childers lost 173 pounds. He also became an advocate for WWW.

“Your spiritual and physical bodies are inseparable,” says Childers, who now lives in St. Louis, Mo., and pastors South County Baptist Church. “While our physical bodies are finite, it’s important that we understand the interconnectedness of the two.”

Hardy and the other two full-time WWW staff members worked with the county’s churches to bring nutrition and exercise information to the congregations. LaVonda and Phil Tanner were among those who attended.

Wes Tanner takes his parents on an afternoon walk for fitness.

“For six weeks we went to Donna’s class on Wednesday nights rather than going to Bible study,” LaVonda Tanner says. “Donna and them prepared the Wednesday night dinners and then they’d talk to us about exercise and calories.”

During that time, Phil Tanner lost 30 pounds that he’s kept off. LaVonda has lost 26 pounds. The Tanners have also learned to eat healthier—adding grapes, apples and bananas to their children’s snacks and buying cereal with less sugar. LaVonda has also joined the Curves fitness center. Phil was walking two miles a day, but a pinched nerve in his back has recently limited his mobility.

The Tanners are just one example of a family that has changed its habits as a result of Wilkes Wild About Wellness. In addition to working with churches, Hardy and the rest of WWW team also mapped out a number of walking routes in the community, including a popular stretch of Robert Toombs Avenue.

“You can set your watch by seeing whose out walking,” Hardy says, chuckling. “At 5 a.m. you’ll see the dads and the school teachers. At 5 p.m., it’s the teen-agers. At 6, it’s the moms. At 7, you’ll see young couples and at 8 you see the older couples who have waited for it to cool down.”

The community has significantly increased its parks and recreation budget and obtained a Community Development Block Grant to renovate its gymnasium. Programs were emphasized in the schools, including the Tiger Tracks exercise incentive program, and with the elderly, such as the “Flex and Stretch” program and a walking program that at one time had 150 participants.

The ending of funding in September 2005 could have been catastrophic for Wilkes Wild About Wellness—except that it had been anticipated from the beginning of the project.

“Part of our original goal was to determine if—given the appropriate training and support—a community would and could take ownership of a nutrition and exercise program,” Mullis says. “And, based on what we’re seeing, the answer is absolutely yes.

“Ideally, we wish there was funding available to continue to pay Donna to serve as the county’s wellness coordinator,” Mullis says, “but Washington-Wilkes has provided a model for small, rural counties embracing health promotion. We said from the beginning that the community should be the senior partner, and Washington-Wilkes has done exactly that.”

In fact, the success has been so great that Healthcare Georgia, a private foundation that focuses on advancing the health of Georgians, has provided funding for the researchers to develop a manual for other rural communities to use in establishing community health partnerships.

Mullis and Hardy have traveled to Clarkesville, Americus and Brunswick to meet with community leaders about the program, which will be led by the family and consumer sciences county Extension agents in those communities.

“The health crisis in Georgia will only change if there’s buy-in from everyone that we need to improve our nutrition and exercise,” Mullis says. “Our experience in Wilkes County has shown us that’s possible.”