by Guest | Feb 20, 2024 | Being Well, Eat Well, Featured, Uncategorized, Why I'm In, Work Well
“WHY I’M IN …” An interview with Mari Tasche, Oregon Health & Science University
What drew you/your organization to partner with Tillamook County Wellness?
When first introduced to Tillamook County Wellness, I was inspired by the work of the committees and felt that TCW aligned with my passion for improving the wellness and quality of life of others, particularly those made vulnerable by current systems. I have always been actively involved in my community, whether coaching youth soccer or coordinating a community-wide couch to 5k running group. As an exercise physiologist looking to transition into public health and plant my roots on the north coast, TCW provided a great opportunity to understand the region’s needs and get involved in efforts to address community health.
What, if any, changes have you seen come about as a result of this work?
Improving the health and wellness of a county is challenging work and truly takes a village. TCW is a unifying force that brings people and organizations together to share knowledge, leverage resources, and provide support. This strengthens our connections, creates unity, and fosters collective progress for the betterment of our community. I have seen many organizations coordinate and collaborate on projects, programs, and initiatives they might not have otherwise pursued together. This coalition has also taken ownership of the community health needs assessment and improvement plan to address the region’s top health and social needs. Efforts include evaluating and refocusing the work of committees, pursuing or supporting grants, establishing or strengthening partnerships, and broadening community outreach and engagement.
What have you learned from being involved in this work?
I have learned that opportunities are endless if you make the effort to reach out. Many people want to see this county thrive and want to contribute their part to make that happen. It is inspiring and fuels my optimism for this work. I have also learned that this work is like climbing a mountain with no top. It’s endless, but if you enjoy what you are doing, it doesn’t feel like a daunting task- and don’t forget to celebrate the small steps!
What are your hopes for this work as it relates to you/your organization?
My role has continued to evolve since joining a few years ago, and I strive to find my niche and how to best contribute my time and resources to TCW. As I wrap up my master’s degree in public health this fall, I am looking to align my final projects with TCW initiatives and develop relevant content and materials to drive this work forward. As a regionally based employee with the Oregon Rural Practice-based Research Network at OHSU, I aim to pursue future opportunities for cross-over and collaboration.
What are your hopes for this work as it relates to changing community health in Tillamook County.
Changing community health takes a multifaceted and dynamic approach. I hope that TCW continues to address this challenge holistically by strengthening a diverse network with a unified message, comprehensive strategy, and county-wide framework that can meet the needs of every individual and help them live their best, healthy lives.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
I appreciate being a part of this coalition and look forward to what we can accomplish in the coming years.
For more local health and wellness information, visit www.tillamookcountywellness.org or follow Tillamook County Wellness on Facebook and Instagram.
by Guest | Jul 26, 2022 | Move Well
We may be coming in on the last month of summer, but there are still plenty of local, family friendly events taking place right here in Tillamook County (for free!) Whether it’s wandering down Laneda Avenue in Manzanita to enjoy the local poetry displays or joining a guided tour to learn about our salt marsh habitats, there is something for everyone over the next couple weeks. These opportunities make for a great excuse to round up some friends and family to enjoy the summer weather – and a huge thank you to the local organizations who are hosting these events for free!
Events Organized by Date:
Hoffman Center Poetry Walk by the Hoffman Center for the Arts
When and where: July 1st – 30th along Laneda Avenue in Manzanita
This Poetry Walk features fifteen poems celebrating summer at the coast and written by local poets. Poems are placed along nine blocks of Laneda Avenue in Manzanita, between the Visitor’s Center on 1st to the west and the architecturally beautiful Columbia Bank building at Classic Street to the east. This poetry walk is a fun and free event for all. You can also buy a chance to win one of the 18 by 24 framed poems for $10 per ticket – winners will be selected August 1st.
To learn more, visit https://hoffmanarts.org/events/poetry-walk/ or the Facebook page @Hoffman Center Manzanita
Mindfulness Walk by Tillamook County Wellness
When and where: Sitka Sedge Natural Area Parking Lot on Saturday July 30th at 9 am (for guide training) or 10 am (for mindfulness walk)
Join TCW for a guided morning walk-and-learn! Besides benefiting mental and physical health, mindfulness is free, with no gear to buy, and available to try any time. This is a 2 for 1 mindfulness event: From 9 am to 10 am, we will be leading a “guide training” for those who would like to learn how to share mindful walking techniques with your community. At 10 am, we will start the guided mindfulness walk at the Sitka Sedge parking lot trailhead. By the end of the walk, you will have the materials and knowledge to continue a mindfulness-based walking practice, and pass on the knowledge to friends and family.
To learn more, visit the Facebook page @TillamookCountyWellness for the event details
Salt Marsh Ecology Walk along Netarts Bay by Friends of Netarts Bay – Watershed, Estuary, Bay, and Sea
When and where: Sunday July 31st from 10 am to 2 pm at the Netarts Bay (4949 Netarts Hwy W)
Description: Join Friends of Netarts Bay – Watershed, Estuary, Beach, and Sea (WEBS) for a FREE event including a presentation and guided tour along the salt marsh at the southern end of Netarts Bay. Learn about the plants and animals that live in this unique habitat and the importance of this environment from the forest to the water’s edge. Discover how plants survive in a salty world and explore the succession of vegetation from the bay to the dunes. This event is free but registration is required.
To learn more, visit https://www.netartsbaywebs.org/events or the Facebook page @NetartsBayWEBS
Walk and Talk: Cape Falcon Marine Reserve by North Coast Land Conservancy
When and where: Thursday August 11th, 2022 from 10 am to 12 pm at the Devil’s Cauldron and Elk Flats Trail in Oswald West State Park
Description: Bring your binoculars and hiking shoes for a walk and talk on the Elk Flats Trail with both the NCLC Marine Program Coordinator Kirstin Bayans and Land Steward Eric Owen. Along the way, we will discuss the surrounding flora and fauna of Oswald West State Park and the Cape Falcon Marine Reserve. The walk terminates at the Devil’s Cauldron overlook. This program is free but registration is required.
To learn more, visit https://nclctrust.org/on-the-land/ or the Facebook page @nclctrust
This Way to Well-Being by Tillamook County Wellness
When and where: Multiple locations from April through October
There is no “right” path to wellness; it’s a journey that is unique to each person. We all have different interests that motivate us, as well as different challenges or barriers that prevent us from sticking to healthy habits. By looking at the things we want to do, we stand a much better chance of getting on – and staying on – a path to well-being. To help you navigate what that path might look like, we have developed a handy map of fun activities here in Tillamook County that have helped others improve their health and well-being. This activity is free and open to everyone. As an added bonus, visiting points along the map gives you a chance to win prizes!
To learn more, visit https://tillamookcountywellness.org/this-way-to-well-being-2/ or the Facebook page @TillamookCountyWellness
For more upcoming local events, keep an eye on the Tillamook Chamber of Commerce Community Calendar which can be found here: https://tillamookchamber.org/events/
Other wellness questions? Email us at info@tillamookcountywellness.org. For more local health and wellness information, visit www.tillamookcountywellness.org or follow Tillamook County Wellness on Facebook and Instagram.
by Guest | Apr 20, 2022 | Move Well
This is the second post in a series exploring Tillamook County Wellness’ ‘This Way to Well-being’ map. Today we explore the role movement plays in our health and wellbeing.
Have you ever noticed that you are in a better mood after taking a short walk around the block? According to the Mayo Clinic, it’s not your imagination: “regular exercise can increase self-confidence, improve your mood, help you relax, and lower symptoms of mild depression and anxiety.” Making time to move can even help you get better sleep. In addition to helping cope with stress, the physical benefits of movement (like reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes) keep our bodies healthier and improve mobility throughout our lives.
Finding ways to fit in short neighborhood walks, playing fetch with your dog, gardening, or riding a bike can add up to significant positive changes in your health. Making a plan, adding it to your calendar and inviting friends to join will help keep you on track to your fitness goals. If you haven’t been active in a while, make sure to start off slow and increase duration and intensity as your fitness improves.
Tillamook County residents interested in experiencing the benefits of exercise have access to a wide spectrum of opportunities. The ‘This Way to Well-Being’ offers several ways we can integrate movement along the path to wellness; from the great outdoors, to the climate-controlled indoors, and activities you can do on your own or with a group.
- Visit a Park: You don’t have to travel far to find a park in Tillamook County, and you might find the one closest to home is a great place to take a lunchtime walk.
- Explore the Tillamook Coast Recreation Map: Between ocean beaches at Bob Straub State Park, the Hoquarton Trail in Tillamook and forest trails on Mt. Hebo, it might be hard to choose.
- Try a new Fitness Class: Exercising with a group can keep us motivated and connect with other members of our community. You can find classes at the Tillamook County Family YMCA, North Coast Recreation District, or Kiawanda Community Center . Keep an eye out for the Tillamook Bay Community College Course Catalog in your mailbox which lists upcoming fitness classes in the county.
- Join a Walking Group: Walking season has arrived! There are groups in North, South and Central County that meet to walk rain or shine starting in April. You can find information about a group near you on our website here.
- Walk along the beach: Known as The People’s Coast, after the 1967 law that guaranteed free and unrestricted public beach access, the Oregon Coast is among the most accessible in the USA. Trails along the coast and bays in Tillamook County are wonderful spots to birdwatch, storm watch, or view tide pools (Barview Jetty and Nedonna Beach). With a tide table, clam shovel, and shellfish license from ODFW you might even bring home lunch.
For information and resources about points of interest for moving well, visit our This Way to Well-Being page on our website. By participating in our well-being campaign, you may be eligible to win a prize! See our website or Facebook page for details.
AUTHOR: Brett Buesnel, AmeriCorps VISTA with Tillamook County Community Health Center
Other wellness questions? Email us at info@tillamookcountywellness.org. For more local health and wellness information, visit www.tillamookcountywellness.org or follow Tillamook County Wellness on Facebook and Instagram.
by Guest | Feb 9, 2021 | Move Well
Time. There never seems to be enough of it for what we need and want to do each day. What if I told you that you can get twice the workout in half the time? If it sounds too good to be true, then you haven’t heard about High Intensity Interval Training, or HIIT. Getting 30 or 60 minutes of exercise into each day means letting go of other priorities (like sleep, family time and leisure). If we do carve out time in our schedules to exercise, we often struggle to stay motivated to get in a full bout of vigorous activity. It’s not surprising. Our brains are wired to help us avoid suffering!
The trick is to trick the mind into looking forward to physical activity. This can be done by choosing exercise routines we enjoy (dance, hiking, etc.) but also by strategically engineering our workouts to get the biggest return from the shortest amount of time. Knowing we can swap an hour-long slog of a workout with a mentally manageable 20-minute workout can be the difference between frustration and success.
As noted in this article from the American Council on Exercise, one of the most common misperceptions about exercise is that a person has to spend hours sweating buckets in order to reap the benefits. We all know those marathon runners who really do sweat buckets to stay so fit but most of us just want to get into a routine that helps us look and feel better and improve our health in the process. HIIT is just the ticket.
What is HIIT?
HIIT involves alternating higher-intensity activity with intervals of lower-intensity activity. The idea is to get your heart rate up for a short period of time (work phase) and then slow down for a short period of time (recover phase). Intervals can be 1:1, 1:2, or 1:3. For example, you can alternate jogging for 1-minute and walking for 1-minute (1:1), jog 1-minute and walk 2-minutes (1:2) or run 15 seconds and walk 45 seconds (1:3). The key is to start with a cycle that you know you can stick with and build from. For a beginner, that could be as little as 4 minutes of brisk walking or jumping jacks for 15 seconds, followed by 45 seconds marching in place.
Cycling through intervals for as little as 10 minutes can provide similar benefits of a 30-minute sustained activity depending on the intensity levels. A good way to measure exercise intensity is by using a rate of perceived exertion (RPE), with 1 being very low intensity and 10 being the highest level of intensity you can manage. An effective workout should have at least a 5-minute warm-up, a minimum of five high-intensity work intervals and a cool down. As a general rule, the warm-up would be around a 3-4 RPE, with work phase between 8-10 RPE and rest/recovery phase around 5-6 RPE.
There are many benefits to HIIT training, including improved heart health and better endurance, but one of the most important benefits is psychological. HIIT workouts are both physiologically and psychologically easier. Building rest breaks into a short workout make it much easier to begin and stick with a regular exercise habit.
HIIT examples
- Walking or jogging as fast as you can and then walking at a leisurely pace
- Calisthenics – alternating short bouts of jumping jacks, push-ups, squats and lunges with marching in place
- Swimming one lap as fast as possible with a recovery lap in between
- Select the Interval Training or Hill Climb option for Treadmill, Elliptical or Rowing machines
- Set up a dance play list with alternating fast and slow songs
HIIT can be safe and effective at any age or fitness level. To learn more about how high-intensity interval training can even be more effective for older adults, read this article from the Mayo Clinic. If you have health concerns, be sure to check with your doctor before starting a new exercise routine.
AUTHOR: Michelle Jenck, Adventist Health Tillamook Director of Community Wellbeing and TCW Coordinator
For more local health and wellness information, follow Tillamook County Wellness on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
by Guest | Sep 3, 2020 | Move Well
Gardening is a way to take direct control of your access to fresh foods — you are able to provide for yourself, your family, and your neighbors. And you’re also able to make decisions about what it is that you want to eat, and let’s face it, homegrown foods just taste better! My garden has provided even more respite this year. The “chore” of watering is my zen time.
Gardening feeds more than your stomach, it nurtures and fulfills the soul. Growing something is such a wonderful recreational and therapeutic activity for many folks across generations to take part in. According to OSU Master Gardeners there has been a nearly 1,000% increase in questions and class participation in gardening this year in Oregon.
If you are interested in preserving any of your bounty, you might have also encountered a “shortage” of canning jars and supplies. Don’t worry! There are other ways to preserve your veggies and fruit. Consider drying and/or freezing – OSU Extension has several great publications available, including Freezing Fruits & Vegetables and Drying Fruits & Vegetables.
Freezing and drying work well when you just have a few servings to preserve, and especially if your family will be eating it within the next year. While you are harvesting and storing the bounty, remember that we can garden almost year-round here on the temperate (most of the time) Oregon Coast. And there are tips and ideas for “extending the season” – such as cloches and raised beds, the best varieties to grow and now’s the time.
Extend vegetable crop through fall and winter by planting now
You can plant vegetables in late summer/early fall after you harvest crops and as space is available; and in many years you can have a year-round garden. Some of the best vegetables are produced during the warm days and cold nights of fall. Light frost adds sugar to sweet corn and crispness to carrots. Parsnips, kale, collards, Brussels sprouts and Jerusalem artichokes also improve with a touch of frost.
Certain vegetables are better suited to Fall and Winter harvest than others. A complete list of recommended varieties and how to grow them can be found in the eight-page guide Fall and Winter Vegetable Gardening in the Pacific Northwest.
A key to successful fall or winter gardening is location of your garden. Choose the warmest spot you have that is not prone to early frost, avoid the bottom of a hill or an area with lots of bushes and trees. A south-facing slope is best for winter sun. Be sure to restore nutrients removed by spring and summer crops with a light layer of compost or aged manure or a small application of fertilizer. Do not over-fertilize with nitrogen.
During the rainy season, good well-drained soils are essential. Raised beds are best and amend it with organic matter such as compost.
Timely planting is another key to success. Crops need time to become well-established before cold weather and short days curtail growth, but if you plant too early, the young plants can wilt in the heat or mature too soon. Choose the fastest-maturing varieties and pay attention to the average date of the first killing frost in our area, which can vary from mid-October to late November, depending on location. Near the beaches, there might not even be a frost, while up our river valleys there can be several hard frosts in October. Again, raised beds and containers, location, location, location, with cloches or row covers, and you can grow year-round. You can give seeds a head-start in containers or a nursery bed, or buy starts from a garden center.
Brassicas or cole crops such as – brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbages, will overwinter and continue to produce well into November or December.
Early fall is the time to plant garlic for harvest in late spring next year.
Plant shallots or onions to overwinter and for early crops.
Leafy greens, lettuce, spinach and kale are all “winter regulars” in my deck planters. We really enjoy “microgreens” planted right outside our kitchen to add crunch to sandwiches and salads. We re-grow and re-plant these; another popular microgreen are pea-shoots.
Select your favorite herbs (most are perennials) and plant in containers near your kitchen to be able to add freshness to dishes year-round. Some easy to grow favorites are oregano, thyme, sage and rosemary.
A crop that fails one year because of an unusually early freeze or abnormally cold winter may thrive in a milder year. Be willing to experiment, and don’t give up if your results are less than stellar. Every year is a learning experience – this year it was the chipmunks that kept eating our lettuce seeds (sometimes before they sprouted). Replanting ensued and covers added to prevent critter invasions, and viola! Lettuce rejoice!
For answers to your gardening questions, Tillamook County Master Gardeners are available via phone at 503-842-3433 or email tillamookmastergardener@gmail.com.
The Tillamook County Pioneer has teamed up with Tillamook County Master Gardeners to provide virtual garden tours in 2020. The links for the virtual tours can be found here and here (with more to come).
AUTHOR: Laura Swanson, Master Gardener (Class of 2004)
For more local health and wellness information, follow Tillamook County Wellness on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
