(Radio Iowa) – A pilot program aims to increase the overall health of residents in the town of Manchester and in Van Buren County. Experts are collecting extensive data on the two eastern Iowa communities. That’s so they eventually know how to make the most strategic investments in public health. Jason Henderson, vice president of Iowa State University’s Extension and Outreach, says they hope the program has very long-lasting effects. “We’re going to need to step back into the communities and look at them five years from now, 10 years from now, how did this one ripple of us dropping the stone in the brook,” Henderson says, “and how has it rippled over time?”

Edith Parker, dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa, says setting up the plan will take several years as it needs to be carefully plotted out.  “Sometimes you don’t consider that as a community of, if I build a trail, then that’s money I maybe could have put into the school system,” Parker says, “and at the end of the day, which lever is really going to kind of be more impactful?”

The program is led by the Iowa Rural Vitality Coalition, which is made up of experts from Iowa’s three Regents universities, Wellmark and the Iowa Rural Development Council. It was launched in April.