Pedaling Toward a Healthier Future: How SHIP Is Moving Active Living Forward

The Statewide Health Improvement Partnership (SHIP) is Minnesota's ongoing, community-driven public health initiative that provides funding and local staff to support three key areas: active living, healthy eating, and commercial tobacco-free living. Across the state, communities partner with schools, organizations, worksites, and municipalities to create environments where making healthy choices is easier. For the past 17 years, SHIP staff in Faribault and Martin Counties have worked closely with local partners to make walking, biking, and physical activity safer, more appealing, and more accessible.

In recent months, SHIP staff have continued strengthening active living through education, planning, and policy work. A major step forward came in May with the Walk! Bike! Fun! Train-the-Trainer Bike Education Workshop. This training gives schools and community groups the practical skills they need to offer consistent, high-quality bike safety lessons. Partners can now access a shared bike fleet and trailer, purchased for Faribault, Martin, and Watonwan Counties, which helps ensure youth across multiple communities have opportunities to learn safe riding skills. By building local expertise, the workshop supports a sustainable, community-led model for bike education.

Alongside training new bike safety leaders, SHIP staff also worked with local communities to offer bike education opportunities for children and families. In Blue Earth, staff and volunteers led a youth bike rodeo where participants practiced basic safety skills and joined a guided ride through town. SHIP staff also offered a preschool bike safety demonstration at Head Start's Bikes, Books, and Frozen Yogurt event, helping young children learn early habits like visibility and proper helmet fit. Later in May, SHIP and Truman Active Living held a bike rodeo for 3rd and 4th graders. Students built new skills, gained confidence, and applied what they learned during a short community ride - a meaningful experience for many children who were new to bike safety education.

Bike safety education is just one way SHIP is advancing active living across the region. SHIP staff also continue to support longer-term planning and policy work designed to improve active transportation options on a broader scale. In Blue Earth, the local Active Living Coalition has spent the past 15 years improving infrastructure, planning, and community outreach to support biking. After years of progress, SHIP staff assisted the coalition in submitting its application to the League of American Bicyclists' Bike Friendly Community program. The application process requires detailed documentation, ongoing engagement among partners, and a clear demonstration of the community's commitment to safe, accessible bicycling.

In Martin County, SHIP staff are partnering with the Des Moines Valley Health & Human Services SHIP program to explore the idea of creating a regional trail linking Jackson to Fairmont using former railroad corridors. Working alongside MnDOT, local engineers, Project 1590, Region 9 Development Commission, and local economic development partners, the team has been assessing feasibility and identifying potential funding sources to make this multi-county trail a reality.

Together, these efforts highlight how SHIP is helping communities build safer routes, expand educational opportunities, and plan long-term improvements that support active living. By combining training, direct outreach, and infrastructure planning, SHIP is creating environments where residents of all ages can more easily and confidently choose to walk, bike, and be active.

Interested in learning more about SHIP in Faribault & Martin Counties? Visit Statewide Health Improvement Partnership!