First Lady Michelle Obama started the Let’s Move campaign in 2010 to turn a bright spotlight on the nation’s epidemic of childhood obesity. The campaign encourages schools to become healthy worksites, create wellness councils, join the USDA’s Healthier U.S. Schools Challenge, incorporate nutrition and physical education into their curriculum, and plant gardens.
Bronx Health REACH, a coalition of over 70 community and faith-based organizations that has worked to reduce health disparities in the South Bronx for over 10 years, is contributing to this effort with two new programs. The first is an evidence-based nutrition education program known as “Bienestar/NEEMA,” which was created by the Social and Health Research Center in San Antonio, Texas. With funding from the Johnson & Johnson/Johns Hopkins Community Health Care Scholars Program, REACH will work with three public elementary schools in the South Bronx, training teachers to teach the curriculum, which includes six 45-minute classes taught once per week.
Children who receive the program will learn about choosing healthy foods, the steps to good health, and setting personal goals every week to improve their habits. As part of the program, parents of participating children will attend afterschool workshops addressing such topics as sugar-sweetened beverages, eating home-cooked meals, increasing fruits and vegetable consumption and engaging in physical activity. In addition, parents will be given a pedometer and step log to track the number of steps they are taking in a day with the goal of reaching 10,000 daily steps.
Evaluation will consist of pre and post surveys to measure changes in children’s nutrition knowledge, attitudes and behaviors. The children’s height and weight measurements will also be taken prior to program implementation and again at the conclusion.
The long-term goal is to expand the program to reach 600 students in the third and fourth grades in elementary schools in the South Bronx over the next two years.
In addition to the Bienestar/NEEMA Health Program, Bronx Health REACH is funded by the New York State Department of Health to help improve school wellness policies and practices in two South Bronx school districts. This program, known as HEA+LTHY Schools NY, worked on three policy areas during the 2010-2011 school year: competitive foods (foods sold or served during fundraisers, celebrations, and in vending machines), physical fitness (developing a physical education plan for each school so that each child receives a minimum of 120 minutes of physical activity per week), and tobacco-free policies for within and around the school.
Due to funding cuts, the program will focus exclusively on physical education and physical activity programs during the 2011-2012 school year. Policy initiatives will include advocating for increased classroom-based physical activity programs (e.g., structured physical activity breaks scheduled during class time), using creative scheduling and other methods to help schools achieve the required 120 minutes of weekly physical education, advocating for at least 20 minutes of daily recess, and facilitating the creation of playstreets and other physical activity “inducements” in the built environment.
HEA+LTHY Schools NY is also working beyond school buildings in an effort to ensure that strong school wellness policies are adopted and enforced at the district level, and eventually city-wide. To this end, the program has created a Policy Advisory Committee that meets monthly as part of the Bronx Health REACH Nutrition and Fitness Workgroup. The meetings are attended by community coalition members and representatives from a variety of non-profit organizations concerned with school wellness in the Bronx. The program is building momentum and looks forward to more progress in the 2011-2012 school year.
For more information, please visit www.bronxhealthREACH.org.