MT State team receives grant from National Cancer Institute for project
Montana researchers will use the grant to support agents in changing the built environment to make it easier for people to have active lifestyles.
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MSU News Service
BOZEMAN — A new grant-funded project aims to support Montana State University Extension agents to make Montana communities more conducive to active lifestyles.
The project, “Built Environment Approaches to Physical Activity: Testing Community-Driven Implementation Strategies,” is supported by a two-year, $283,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. The grant was awarded to the Center for Nutrition & Health Impact, an independent nonprofit research center. Laura Balis, research scientist at the center, is the principal investigator. Michelle Grocke-Dewey, associate professor in the MSU Department of Human Development and Community Health and a health and wellness specialist with MSU Extension, leads the MSU portion of the grant, which includes a research-practice partnership with MSU Extension agents. The project began in September and runs through August 2026.
“This project is working with agents across Montana to make their communities more built for active lifestyles as a means of health and wellness generally, and more specifically, cancer prevention,” said Grocke-Dewey. “Specifically, it’s supporting agents to work with communities to make assessments of, and modifications to, their built environments so that being active is the easy choice.”
She noted that higher levels of physical activity are associated with lower risk of 13 types of cancer.
“Physical activity is critical to cancer prevention, management and survivorship,” Grocke-Dewey said. “Yet only 20% of Americans meet national physical activity recommendations. Physical activity also helps to prevent obesity, which is a risk factor for many cancers.”
Grocke-Dewey said the project will test strategies that are offered to Extension agents to support them in implementing built environment approaches. Built environment approaches remove barriers to physical activity, making it safer and easier for people of all ages and abilities to walk, bicycle or use a wheelchair. Some examples include adding street lighting to make pedestrians and cyclists more visible to motorists; adding pathways, crosswalks or bike lanes to connect trails; and adding features at intersections to encourage traffic to slow down.
Research shows that education on the importance of physical activity for health isn’t enough, she said. Without environmental supports and policies to help people make positive health changes, education only goes so far.
“After years of Extension agents doing a lot of individual education, we’re really seeing how structural change has to come along with it if we really want to see positive health impacts,” Grocke-Dewey said.
Without community-driven, tailored implementation strategies, community organizations can struggle with implementing complex built-environment approaches, Grocke-Dewey said. That’s why the research team asked Extension agents across Montana for feedback on what implementation strategies would be most helpful to support them in addressing the built environment in their communities.
“It’s a cool project because we’ve been working in such close partnership with agents in all these different communities,” Grocke-Dewey said. “They helped our team select and develop the strategies. I love that aspect of it.”
At an initial gathering in September, the researchers worked with Extension agents to identify barriers and facilitators to implementing built environment approaches in Montana communities. The researchers shared potential implementation strategies and asked the agents for input, leading the team to collectively select three strategies to test over the next year.
The participating Extension agents asked for a toolkit of information, including how to build a coalition, and how to perform a needs assessment and identify goals. They also said technical assistance, or access to people who could talk them through the toolkit’s steps, would be helpful. The final idea the group chose was help for the agents to secure grants to enable changes to their built environments.
The three priorities the Extension agents selected are all part of the first phase of the project, and all Extension agents throughout Montana are invited to use those resources.
“We want to get as many communities throughout Montana on board as possible to try to change the built environment for the better and help get people more active,” Grocke-Dewey said.
For the second part of the project, the researchers will use an evaluation framework called RE-AIM (which stands for reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation and maintenance) to assess the impact of the implementation strategies on agents’ ability to help their communities address their built environment.
“Are these strategies working to increase agents’ adoption of built environment approaches? There is this important, nuanced evaluation piece to see how these implementation strategies work, which will guide our final recommendations and revisions,” Grocke-Dewey said.
Shelby Jones-Dozier, a family and consumer sciences agent with MSU Extension in Teton County, said she is participating in the project because she believes in the work. She said that community health reports show a significant lack of access to community exercise opportunities in Teton County.
“Our sidewalks are over 100 years old,” she said. “There is lots of cracking and they’re really uneven. It’s very dangerous for our aging population. I want to see older adults able to get out and walk to the post office, walk to the grocery store.”
She added that she hopes that as a result of the work, her community will form a coalition to push the work forward.
“I’m hoping for a (built environment) project that is something that the people choose and then also – since they’ll have a personal investment in it – that they’ll be more likely to use it.”
