CONCORD, N.H. (AP) -- Two New Hampshire cities and a town in Vermont will try to get in shape together as part of a research project to test a group-based approach to improving cardiovascular health.

Dartmouth’s Prevention Research Center is overseeing the nine-month project at Keene and Manchester in New Hampshire and St. Johnsbury in Vermont.

It is based on a program developed in southwestern New Hampshire called InSHAPE that pairs people with serious mental illness with physical fitness coaches. The new project, called InSHAPE Together, will draw from the general population.

"What’s really nice about this approach, which is in line with what we know about how people learn and change behavior, is that they’re learning together about how to make change," said the project’s lead investigator, Karen Schifferdecker of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Practice.

Each community will enroll 30 people. Participants ranging in age from 12 to older adults will attend monthly meetings on nutrition and exercise. They will set personal goals, and researchers will track how small changes in behavior affect their health.

Hoping to build on existing social connections among participants, Keene selected its group from the congregation of the Monadnock Convenant Church, where the monthly meetings will be held. The first was being held Sunday.

"The fact that they’re already linked in some way socially and through other relationships will really help us have an advantage in improving their own health, their team’s health and their wider community," said Dr. Rudy Fedrizzi of Cheshire Medical Center and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene.

The Manchester program is recruiting participants from the Rimmon Heights neighborhood on the city’s West Side and neighborhoods around the Beech Street and Wilson elementary schools on the East Side. Jaime Hoebeke, the city’s senior public health specialist, said the neighborhoods are medically underserved, have a high poverty rate and have established community organizations that have expressed interest in improving public health.

She said she hopes the project not only helps people improve their health but strengthens social connections among neighbors, which could boost their problem-solving ability as a group that can be applied to other issues.

"They’ll be hearing about ways to move from problem identification to action, and we’re hoping this is a way to engage community residents in the process of creating healthy environments that are great places to live," she said.

Laural Ruggles of Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital said it took months of discussion to make sure the project would work in three different communities, given that Manchester is New Hampshire’s largest city, St. Johnsbury is rural and Keene is somewhere in between.

In St. Johnsbury, a mix of ages and income levels will be represented in the group, Ruggles said. Participants will be divided into teams and a team leader appointed to check in with other members weekly.

"Maybe they’ll set up a buddy system and a phone call, or maybe they’ll say ‘Hey, we’re all going to meet and walk after dinner,"’ she said. "That’s going to be totally up to them."

While the project is focused on individuals, she hopes it will spur ideas for the wider community.

"It would be really cool if they said, ‘We want to go to the selectboard in St. Johnsbury and tell them we want them to fix the sidewalk to make it easier to walk,"’ she said.

Dartmouth has secured a variety of funding sources, including federal money, for the project. The program is free to participants.