Wheeling Walks

Wheeling Walks is a mass media campaign to promote walking among sedentary 50- to 65-year-old adults in Wheeling, West Virginia. In 1998, 70% of the adult population reported little or no physical activity, with 78% of 55- to 64-year-olds reporting sedentary behavior. Wheeling Walks uses social marketing to promote 30 minutes of daily walking through participatory planning, paid media, public relations, public health activities, policy, and environmental changes. Media campaigns include gender targeted television ads, radio ads, and newspaper ads focused on promoting walking as a way to improve health and energy levels with limited time investment. In addition, Wheeling Walks uses public relations events with physicians and community leaders in combination with public health education programs to encourage physical activity among sedentary adults.

The goal of Wheeling Walks is to increase walking among Wheeling, WV residents aged 50-65 years.

Over 90% of intervention community members indicated that they had heard about the Wheeling Walks campaign. In a pre- and post-intervention telephone survey of over 1,400 adults, 32% of the baseline sedentary population in the intervention community reported meeting the recommendation for 30 minutes of walking five times a week, compared to only 18% in the comparison community. Individuals living in the intervention area significantly increased the number of reported walking minutes from pretest (mean = 63.8) to posttest (mean = 143.5, p < 0.0001) and reported significantly more minutes of walking than comparison community respondents (122.9 vs. 87.6 minutes, p < 0.003).