Johnson & Johnson Community Health Care Program


The Johnson & Johnson Community Health Care Program, in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has announced a grant funding opportunity for non-profit community health care organizations implementing evidence-based, community-education programs that promote wellness and healthy lifestyle choices to prevent and reduce the impact of obesity in children.

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Safeway Foundation

The goals of this funding are to empower innovative programs to expand and enhance services, increase capacity, and/or incorporate new strategies to support healthy body weights among children and adolescents; evaluate the impact of existing programs; and identify promising approaches that could be replicated, adapted, and implemented in diverse communities nationwide. The program seeks to fund nonprofit organization…

You've heard of sit-in?   A few years back ( well, quite a few years back) they were as popular as "peaceful demonstrations".  Well some Chicago students and parents organized a "play in" earlier this week at Chicago Public Schools Headquarters.

Chicago parents are upset that CPS does not have a  mandatory recess period.  It is up to an individual school and teachers whether to offer recess.  Some parents think that is &q…

Students at Pablo Elementary School compete in the Henkel Helps Kids Get Fit contest to win $25,000 to improve health and fitness education, equipment, technology, resources and services for its students and the community. Physical education teacher Darci Nice hopes to use a portion of the award to implement a Peaceful Playgrounds Recess Program which will encourage the student’s to be more physically active during recess. Of Pablo Elementary’s …

Contributed by JC Boushh The decline in physical activity and a sedentary lifestyle has led to a rise in childhood obesity. Free-play and recess it turns out may play a critical role in reversing the obesity trend in children. Researchers from Children's Hospital Boston and the University of Massachusetts have been studying and monitoring the physical activity levels of children during recess and discovered that different recess games produc…

A new study by the World Health Organization (WHO) has named video games as one of the major drivers behind the growing global challenge that is childhood obesity.

The report looked at childhood obesity from a global perspective which stated that one third of kids across the world are now classified as obese. The study blamed this growing trend on a sedentary lifestyle. Only 25 per cent of boys and just 15 per cent of girls are said to get the r…

Contributed by JC Boushh The Cincinnati Enquirer recently posted an article “More Students Feel Lunchtime Crunch” investigating the growing issue of shortened school lunch times. Inquiries to parents throughout the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky area showed a consensus among parents that many school lunch periods had been shortened by as much as 10 minutes. Students complained that there was not enough time for them to get in line to r…

Contributed by JC BoushhResearch by Dr. Antonio Convit may link academic performance with child obesity. In a recent article in the Huffington Post he shared his findings on the possible negative effects of childhood obesity. Dr. Convit began his research studying childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes, and soon began to see a possible correlation with obesity and cognitive learning. He used several research methods to test children’s performance…

Click here or go to the Lets' Move website for the full report.

Information from White House.gov

On May 11 the Childhood Obesity Task Force released their plan for reducing childhood obesity in a generation.

The following are a summary of some 70 recommendations that can be found here.

* Getting children a healthy start on life, with good prenatal care for their parents; support for breastfeeding; adherence to limits on “screen time”; and qu…

by Andrea Bossenmeyer

Everyone blames major junk food companies for advertising to kids, and contributing to childhood obesity...So why then don't we see advertising for broccoli? Green beans? Apples?

This article gives us a brief glimpse into the possibilities...

"the primary takeaway is that companies that sell, say, a certain cereal or fast food can brand their products to give them a market advantage. A single broccoli grower has a lo…

Let me begin by saying this is one of the VERY BEST articles that I've read on the topic of Obesity. Believe me I've read alot of them over the last 10 years and even served on a Statewide Childhood Obesity Committee for a year. In my opinion this article is a must read for physical activity, physical education, and nutrition advocates.


Unless America stops cheering The Biggest Loser and starts getting serious about preventing obesity,…

"Some shortsighted people thought that cutting back on time spent on physical education to spend more time drilling for tests would improve test scores," says Howell Wechsler, director of the Division of Adolescent and School Health for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"But there are a lot of studies that show that more time for PE and other physical activity help improve academic performance."

He and colleagues …

by Andrea Bossenmeyer


What a great idea! A way to get kids fit and increase literacy! It's called Read & Ride!

This is a free program for kids, where used bikes were collected from around the community! I love hearing about this because this is the Recycling for the bikes in the community that might otherwise end up in a landfill. Now they are being used to help kids and the community!

Learn more www.KidsReadAndRide.com

by Travis Saunders Obesity Panacea

In most developed nations, kids get far less physical activity than they did just a few generations ago. Given the strong links between physical inactivity and health risk (and given that we're now seeing "adult" diseases like heart disease and type 2 diabetes in children and teenagers), this has become a very real public health concern. Unfortunately, when it comes to increasing childhood physic…

Mandated PE Policies Ignored in CA


Source: Dick Jones Communications from American Medical Network

Obesity boot camps are not the answer to the nation’s waistline problem, says Deborah J. Wray, associate professor in the department of kinesiology at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

“Many programs have developed out of a desire to take advantage of the money that can be made from the obesity epidemic,” she writes in the March 2010 issue…

Two years ago, as Legislative Chairperson of the CAHPERD I worked with members to advocate for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign several bills into law to eliminate sodas and other highly sweetened beverages and restrict the sale of junk foods in all of California's public schools.

He did. And it appears to have worked according to a study by Sanchez-Vaznaugh and co-investigators which was published in the Journal of Health Affairs. The st…

Gov. Schwarzenegger announced actions to fight obesity and promote healthy living on Wed at the CA Obesity Summit in Los Angeles.

“My top priorities include the health and well-being of our children and all Californians, and reducing obesity will help improve both,” said Governor Schwarzenegger.

“At the 2010 Summit on Health, Nutrition and Obesity, the link between fitness and educational success, the importance of making sure kids have healthy …

A quick update from last week's blog in case you have not been following the soda tax controversy. In the past year, Capitol Hill and even the President have said that taxing sugary soft drinks may be a good way to reduce consumption and create a $50B revenue stream for the federal government over the next decade.

The legislation didn't for forward in Congress but CA legislators are looking at their own version of a soda tax.

California…

Alarming new study indicates that children burdened with overweight and obesity were twice as likely to die before 55 compared to their thinnest counterparts. Most effected were the children with the pre-diabetes diagnosis.

The study, published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, analyzed data gathered from Pima and Tohono O’odham Indians, whose rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes soared decades before weight problems became widesp…

The poster is part of First Lady Michelle Obama's campaign against childhood obesity entitled, "Let's Move."

For a short video and components of the Let's Move Initiative visit the website.