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Friday Field Notes banner image: Featuring engaging stories from practitioners about how partnerships with Cooperative Extension help build Community Capacity to support military service men and women and their families.

Over the past eight Friday Field Notes, we have examined the ways in which cooperative extension can help military family service providers support fitness in all eight domains of Total Force Fitness.

total force fitness

Social Fitness: In the first post of the series, we explored how cooperative extension can support healthy interpersonal relationships through the 4-H Military Partnership and relationship education.

Physical Fitness: Cooperative extension provides education on physical fitness and exercise, as well as programs aimed to get individuals of all ages moving.

Nutritional Fitness: While many families try their best to eat a healthy, balanced diet, keeping up with and understanding current nutrition fads can be tricky. Almost every state’s cooperative extension provides education on nutrition, including current fads, and healthy, low-cost recipes for busy families.

Medical and Dental Fitness: Disease prevention is an important aspect of medical and dental fitness. Cooperative extension provides education on the prevention and treatment of chronic illness as well as cold and flu prevention.

Psychological Fitness: As our families grow and change and life gives us new challenges, it is important to have access to education or suggestions of new coping skills. Cooperative extension provides information on a variety of coping skills and classes to learn them.

Behavioral Fitness: Cooperative extension provides education and resources to reduce risky health behaviors, including tobacco use, and increase health-promoting behaviors, including healthy sleep habits and safe driving.

Spiritual Fitness: In addition to programs that support spirituality as a coping mechanism, cooperative extension also has programs that aim to increase religious literacy and reduce islamophobia and antisemitism.

Environmental Fitness: In the final post of the series we explored the exciting new opportunities that extension can provide in the area of Outdoor RX.

We hope these posts have informed you about the variety of programs available through cooperative extension and inspired you to reach out and work with your local cooperative extension office and agents when working to support military families. We are excited to continue to share resources to support Total Force Fitness in our upcoming series exploring how OneOp provides programming and resources that support Total Force Fitness.