Empowering Healthy Kids Blog

YMCA launch a new programme, “Healthy U” aimed at increasing the health and wellbeing of children in New Jersey:

A new initiative by the Horizon Foundation for New Jersey will use fun exercises and promotion of healthy eating habits to reduce obesity in 18,000 school-age children through YMCAs statewide, foundation officials announced today.
The Healthy U program, as the initiative is being called, is being funded by a $1 million foundation grant. The goal is to reduce obesity rates in children enrolled in YMCA after school programs by up to 10 percent by the year 2011. Using a curriculum developed by researchers at the University of Texas, Healthy U will be rolled out at 359 YMCA sites across New Jersey starting early next month. It will be open to children between the ages of 5 and 12 and will also have a strong parental component.

Healthy U is based on the Coordinated Approach to Child Health (CATCH) curriculum, a national, award winning program with over 15 years of proven research documenting its success in reducing childhood obesity.

The program, which also provides specialized training to YMCA staff, has three major components — physical education, proper nutrition and parental involvement.

This entry (Permalink) was posted on Thursday, September 18th, 2008 at 4:45 pm and is filed under usa, getting active, childhood obesity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site.