Senators and representatives in Idaho, a state with a quickly growing Latino community, are tracking their steps, water intake, and servings of fruits and vegetables as part of a month long, friendly competition aimed at promoting healthy lifestyles and fighting childhood obesity. According to a Fox9 report 50 state legislators are taking part in a competition organized by health insurance provider Blue Cross of Idaho. At the end of the competition the three legislators who track the most physical activity and record eating more fruits and vegetables will win $5,000 from the Blue Cross of Idaho to go toward providing healthier options to elementary school children in their district. Funds will provide for outdoor exercise equipment, healthier meal options, and any other ...
Our friends over at Active Living Research (ALR) have done a wonderful job of creating a new Spanish infographic titled: "Hay Lugares Seguros Para Que Todos Los Ninos Puedan Realizar Actividades Físicas?" This translated version of ALR's popular "Do All Kids Have Safe Places to Be Active?" infographic was a collaborative effort between ALR and Salud America! The infographic paints a clear picture of the multiple barriers that keep children from low-income, Latino, and African American communities from being active. Despite the lack of recreational facilities, broken sidewalks, inadequate time for recess, and higher rates of automobile crashes and crime that exist in these underserved communities, there's hope! By working for improved policies and improvements to ...
A settlement between two California parents and 37 school districts will require elementary schools to show proof that they are providing enough physical education (PE) time to students. As a result of the recent settlement, elementary school teachers will be required to publicly document how many minutes of PE students are getting. In the case that PE time is missed, the teacher must provide an explanation for why the lesson was missed and how they will replace those minutes. Parents will be able to access information on how many minutes of PE students are getting and local school boards will review schedules, according to a news article from the California Report. “We think it’s a huge accomplishment and it’s going to benefit public health in California,” said attorney ...
Teachers and youth groups in Texas now have access to a free mobile app to help them with teaching important nutrition and physical activity concepts. The new Teach Healthier mobile app, which was launched at the TAHPERD Convention in December 2014, was developed by It's Time Texas in partnership with: Snap-Ed, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, and The University of Texas School of Public Health Austin Regional Campus. In just one month over 1,000 individuals have downloaded the app. According to an It's Time Texas blog, coach Katie Harris at the Harmony Science Academy, a school located in Northwest in Houston, uses the app at least 2-3 times a week to teach PE and health to her 5th, 6th and 8th grade students. Wiithout the app Harris would not be able to teach important ...
Every child deserves the right to play and be healthy. Yet many times when the school day gets busy, recess is the first thing to go. In light of recent cuts to recess, a group of parents in Orange County, Florida have now gained national attention for standing up for their children's right to recess. According to a news story from Today.com at least twenty-three elementary schools in Orange County have cut back on or even cancelled recess. "They have become machines that produce data as opposed to children,'' Amy Narvaez, a mother of two, told TODAY. A Think Progress blog reports that prior to bringing the matter before the school board parents collected over 1,200 signatures as part of a petition. At the meeting they also cited research on the benefits of having between ...
Students at Chicago Public Schools weren’t getting enough physical activity and time spent in P.E., so district officials created a new department solely to improve the health and wellness of students. The department’s new chief health officer led the enactment of three new health policies and the rollout of a plan to bring at least 30 minutes of daily P.E. to all students. Soon students in grades K-8 will be getting a minimum of 150 minutes of P.E. a week, and all high school students will be required to take P.E. every semester.
EMERGENCE
Awareness: As the third-largest school district in the nation, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) are responsible for ensuring a healthy learning environment for its diverse student body (45% Hispanic and 39% black). For many years, the district ...
Georgia Shape, a statewide initiative which seeks to bring an additional 30 minutes of physical activity to every elementary school in Georgia has partnered with the Atlanta Falcons Youth Foundation and Playworks, an organization that works to improve the quality of recess by creating a bully-free zone. Through the partnership, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, commissioner Georgia Department of Public Health, said in a Crossroads news article, that the aim would be to make recess safer by providing support and training to staff for delivering the Playworks curriculum to at least 35,000 students at elementary schools across the state. To support this effort and to make recess more inclusive, the Atlanta Falcons Youth Foundation provided an additional $750,000 in grant funds towards the ...
SPARK's Coordinated School Health (CSH) program is now being used by Texas schools thanks to a recent action by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to approve the curriculum for use among students in grades K-8. Texas is now the third state to approve the curriculum as part of a comprehensive student health program, which provides students with physical education, physical activity, health education, and nutrition education in order to counter childhood obesity. In a Yahoo news article, Danielle Housley, MPH Healthy Start Project Facilitator at Northside Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas said: "The SPARK PE Curriculum has become an essential piece of our elementary physical education programs." Educators from other school districts also had positive things to say ...
Physical activity and recess are both important to a child's development and growth, but many times students aren't provided with enough recess time at school. This is especially true for Latino students. According to a Salud America! research brief, schools with predominantly Latino students were were less likely to receive at least 20 minutes of recess compared to schools with primarily White students. Playworks, a national non-profit that helps schools transform the recess experience for students, is working to help change that. They are asking parents to learn more about the state of recess at their child's local school. All kids should be getting at least an hour of physical activity everyday and part of that should include 20 minutes of recess time. Unfortunately many ...
