LEWISTON — Healthy Androscoggin has canceled its 10-week summer fitness program that was designed to encourage people to become more active.

Since 2000, Healthy Androscoggin has run Get Fit & Win. Participants set a goal, kept an activity log and gathered at the end of the session to celebrate and win prizes. Over the years, Get Fit & Win offered walking clubs and other events to encourage people to exercise.

Between a couple of hundred and a couple of thousand people joined Get Fit & Win every year. It averaged about 650 participants. 

Executive Director Steven Johndro notified past participants last week that the program had been canceled. He said Wednesday that Get Fit & Win would not return this year, though it’s possible that it could return in the future. 

He said Healthy Androscoggin, a Healthy Maine Partnerships program, did not have the time or manpower to run the program this year. He also said its Healthy Maine Partnerships work plan has changed, requiring a greater focus on policy and environmental change rather than community exercise programs.

Healthy Androscoggin has made a free copy of its exercise log available online and has posted a trail map and guide to Androscoggin County recreation trails to help people who want to increase their exercise this summer outside the Get Fit & Win program. It has also posted to its website a list of exercise events and opportunities throughout the area.

The Healthy Maine Partnerships budget was cut last year and the program experienced a controversial overhaul by the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which oversees the partnerships. Healthy Androscoggin was among several that lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funding.

That overhaul is under investigation by the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability.

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