‘Mass in Motion’ program expands

A federal grant channeled through the Massachusetts Department of Public Health is helping to significantly broaden the state’s Mass in Motion program, which is designed to promote nutrition and exercise and to discourage smoking.

An initial round of grants in 2010 went primarily to cities, including Fitchburg, Gloucester, New Bedford, Revere, Springfield, and Worcester. Among the few towns to receive money were Franklin, in Norfolk County, and the communities of Lee, Lenox and Stockbridge, which applied for funding jointly.

A recent $3 million Community Transformation Grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is now being administered at the county level.
The Hampshire Council of Governments is channeling $60,000 to the Northampton-based Strategic Planning Initiative for Families and Youth, known as SPIFFY, to augment existing programs related to nutrition and exercise in Amherst, Belchertown, Northampton, and Williamsburg.

“The funding will allow these current programs to become more robust,” said Michele Komosa, a Hampshire Council of Governments employee who leads anti-smoking efforts in Hampshire and Franklin counties and is administering the grant money.

Komosa said that the funding will be used for purposes such as clearing overgrowth that has made a sidewalk on the route to a school impassable.
Komosa, meanwhile, will expand her work of discouraging smoking in homes. The aim will be to persuade landlords to ban smoking in their rental properties.

Five other counties – Barnstable, Berkshire, Dukes, Hampden, and Nantucket – also received Mass in Motion funding. The Metropolitan Area Planning Commission will be administering the program on behalf of its member communities.