Empowering Healthy Kids Blog

Are you a non-profit, Victorian, sporting club? You may want to consider applying for VicHealth’s Active Club Grants 2007. Grants of up to $2,500 are available.

What will be funded?

• Sports Injury Prevention Equipment
• Essential Equipment/Items
• Volunteer and Club Training
• Portable Sun Shade

Who can apply?

Applications will only be accepted from clubs/organisations that facilitate or
organise community-based sport and active recreation opportunities as one of their
primary functions.
Eligible organisations:

• Sporting organisations (eg, local sporting clubs and regional sports leagues
• or associations).
• Local active recreation organisations (eg, walking clubs, dance groups).
• Organisations that have the facilitation or organisation of community sport and
• active recreation opportunities as one of their primary functions.

Organisations must:

• be not for profit;
• be incorporated;
• be based in Victoria;
• be applying for activities taking place in Victoria;
• have satisfactorily acquitted any previous grants that have been received from
• VicHealth; and
• present applications in accordance with published program timelines and
• processes.

This is a great initiative, so make sure that you take advantage of it! Entries close 3 December 2007. Please see VicHealth’s site for more info.

Here are a couple of great ideas to create active and healthy kids:

Students these days are almost as likely to be logging miles walked or run — and even jumping rope — as part of the school day, or at recess or during after-school clubs, as they are to be learning spelling and arithmetic.

In fact, many schools use challenges or point accumulations of some kind so that kids will earn some kind of benefit, in addition to the health boon, for being more physically active.

…

To generate more enthusiasm for choosing fruits and vegetables, the school had an evening farm stand and farmers market for families.

Read the rest of the article with other tips for creating a healthy school environment.

“Count Your Steps” program from Oakland encourages kids to get active:

 The Count Your Steps program instituted and promoted by County Executive L. Brooks Patterson is doing a good job of getting kids to think about exercising more.

About 22,000 third- and fourth-graders walked more than 1.3 billion steps earlier this year in the annual month-long contest to promote exercise.

About 180 schools participated in this year’s contest, launched four years ago after health officials announced that childhood obesity nationwide was an epidemic. Participants received free pedometers and log books to record their walking.

(Source: Oakland Press)

A new growing  trend is emerging in museums across the US: childrens museums.

Many of America’s 300-plus children’s museums, employing bigger and bolder settings, have been pulling out all the stops to pique the curiosity of their patrons to the point where they’ll want to read books or perform on stage, exercise their muscles or get better acquainted with nature.

…

The shift toward accommodating toddlers and even crawlers largely paralleled a flurry of early childhood brain research affirming the social, intellectual and physical benefits of play.

“Play is really how children learn and that is their work as young children,” said Janet Rice Elman, executive director of the Association of Children’s Museums. “They learn best through touching, seeing, smelling, climbing, testing. They’re also learning social skills, how to work with other children.”

She traces the rise of immersive, fun-and-learning methods to the arrival of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s son, Michael, at the Boston Children’s Museum in 1962 when “it was still a natural history, objects-behind-glass place” and he dreamed up a hands-on display showing what life looked like under the streets of Boston.

Scores of museums now have outdoor spaces or gardens to build appreciation of physical activity and the outdoors in an era when childhood obesity is on the rise, she said. And many are loaded with “very empowering” exhibits, such as Strong’s tiny post office, that allow children to practice grown-up roles.

And according to the article:

None other than Albert Einstein, after all, called play “the highest form of research.”

It’s International Walk to School Month:

Walking to school promotes health, physical activity, concern for the environment and safe and walkable communities. This year, join schools around the world as they celebrate walking during the month of October. Communities are encouraged to pick a day, a week, once a week or the entire month to celebrate. Actively promoting Walk to School for a month could also transition smoothly into the launch of a year-round program.

Examples of Walk to School activities:

• Designate “Walking Wednesdays” to encourage walking one day a week and potentially extend the event to a month or a year-long activity
• Develop walking themes for each day of the week: bright, highly visible colors day, “walking hat” day, bring a healthy lunch day, etc.
• Set up a competition with awards for the classes with the most walkers
• Offer an option to students who ride the bus or carpool to walk once they arrive at school.
• Organize a walking school bus from nearby neighborhoods. For information on how, visit www.walkingschoolbus.org
• Plan a school-wide event to recognize the day such as a picnic, an assembly, an awards ceremony or a pizza party for the class with the most walkers
• Fill the month with activities throughout the day that pertain to staying physically fit, eating healthy and caring for the environment.

See also Australian and UK examples of the Walking School Bus.

Here’s the problem:

A six-month progress report on childhood obesity in the East of England shows that only 40 per cent of Cambridgeshire schools have obtained Healthy Schools status - below the national average of 47 per cent.

Here’s the solution:

From next year the Government will offer five to 16-yearolds the chance to participate in five hours of sport a week, and three hours for 16 to 19- year-olds. Height and weight statistics are also being recorded to track progress in tackling obesity, and data from the 2006/07 academic year is expected by September 30.

Simple?

The MEND (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition…Do it!) scheme is experiencing good results from its programme:

The results of the first phases of the programme show, on average:

• Waist circumference reduced by over 2cms
• Physical activity up to over 11.5 hours a week
• Sedentary activity down by 5.5 hours per week
• Body Mass Index (BMI) down by 0.8
• Overall there were significant improvements to participants health and wellbeing

There are quite a few of these interventionist plans currently being launched around the world, so it is encouraging to see positive results. While these are the results from the first 3 years, it will be interesting to see if longer-term behaviour change is apparent. Personally, I like the approach they are taking: learning about themselves and setting goals, nutrition education, increasing physical activity and then actually “doing it” - rather than just learning the theory in the classroom.

PBS is promoting the use of it’s “Kid Fitness” DVD as a fundraising alternative:

Instead of selling cookies and candy to raise funds, “Kid Fitness” is proposing that districts sell DVDs of the “Kid Fitness” series to the school community at $19.99 a pop. Fifty-five percent of the proceeds will go directly to the district.

A school district with an average of 1,300 children in grades pre-K-5 can expect to potentially raise between $10,000 to $134,000, depending on whether a family buys one DVD or the complete series.

“As parents ourselves we hope to provide and an easier way to help our kids stay healthy without selling more candy bars, cookie dough and holiday wrapping paper,” says Paul Neville, CEO and founder of “Kid Fitness.”

Backed by an Emmy Award-winning directorial and writing team, “Kid Fitness” is a live, interactive series geared toward two- to eight-year-olds that revolves around a super health hero called Kid Fitness. Each episode incorporates physical activities, health recipes, nutritional tips, and educational segments to help prevent obesity.

Although I have not seen the DVD, this initiative seems like a great idea to promote kids health and helping schools raise money. If you are interested in your school getting involved please visit their fundraising page and download their fundraising kit.

HopeLab, a non-profit based in Redwood City, California, have launched Ruckus Nation, an online competition to garner ideas to get the young to get active. With up to $300,000 up for grabs, Ruckus Nation are hoping that they receive one or two ideas that they can take and run with:

After winners are announced and prizes are awarded for Ruckus Nation, HopeLab will support the development of product prototypes based on great ideas submitted to the competition. These prototypes will be rigorously tested to determine their effectiveness. Prototypes that prove to be most effective will be developed into final products and made broadly available to kids.

However, please note that all of your rights to the idea are given up to HopeLab (rule number 2.9):

You must have full rights to any idea, works of authorship or invention described in your Entry,
and you must be able to transfer those rights to HopeLab, as described below. If any other
party, including your employer, has any ownership or intellectual property rights to your ideas,
works of authorship or inventions, your Entry will be void.

If it weren’t for this rule I’d enter one of the projects I am working on.

Playdale based in the UK, have launched a new interactive playground, i.play, to motivate kids to be active:

In a game of up to six children, i.play issues each player or team with a sequence of tasks to test speed, agility, coordination, strength and stamina by running, jumping and twisting to hit the high, low and mid-positioned activity switches. Like a games console, it offers multiple levels of difficulty so players can improve their skill and view statistics to monitor their performance both during and after the game. Children can upload their scores to the online league table at http://www.intelligentplay.co.uk. Although developed for a core 8-14 age group, i.play is also suitable for adults, wheelchair users as well as visually and hearing impaired players.

Progressive used heart rate monitors on both adults and children to test both the prototype equipment and software to make sure i.play enabled children to exercise at appropriate levels of intensity. “Stealth exercise is at the heart of i.play technology,” says Professor Mike Caine, Managing Director of Progressive and i.play co-inventor. He continues, “If you make play equipment interesting enough, children will push the boundaries of their abilities in just the same way as they do with computer gaming as they are so focused on improving their score. This distracts children from the discomfort of high intensity exercise, making them more likely to exercise for longer or harder, which in turn maximises the health benefits.”