School Food & Fitness

Healthy Schools Campaign has launched a holistic, school-based plan to make wellness a part of every child’s school experience.

Today’s children and adolescents face unprecedented rates of obesity, which increase their risk of developing diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes, that can follow them into adulthood. While rates have increased for all children, obesity disproportionately affects Latinos, African-Americans, and children living in poor communities.

Opportunity in Schools

A focus on educating the whole child -- including physical education, recess, food education and other wellness initiatives -- offers tremendous benefits for children’s cognitive and social development as well as their health. Research shows that school-based programs that include healthy food, nutrition education, physical activity, parent involvement and lessons about food and food systems promote healthy eating and active lifestyles, a key strategy for preventing obesity. Despite their contributions to good health and learning, these programs are not in place in most school systems.

HSC is connecting with a wide range of stakeholders to create school environments that promote healthy eating and active lifestyles, including:

 

 

Parents

Parents United for Healthy Schools / Padres Unidos Para Escuelas Saludables is an HSC-led coalition that brings together more than 30 community organizations and parent groups from across Chicago. Parents United provides parents with the knowledge and skills they need to advocate for school and district environments that promote healthy eating and active lifestyles. Parents United trains parents to establish and maintain school wellness teams, teams at each school that work with principals to implement the district wellness policy. After the training, parents meet regularly to share lessons learned from their wellness team experiences, and to develop a shared body of knowledge on effective strategies and programs.

Learn more about HSC’s environmental justice work with parents »

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Charter Schools

HSC is working with a group of charter schools to investigate new ways of thinking about school food. This HSC-led collaborative of schools is creating replicable models that can be adapted and used by a variety of public schools to re-invent the school food experience.

Why work with charter schools? In 2004, Chicago Mayor Daley launched Renaissance 2010, an initiative to create 100 new schools by the year 2010. These schools have flexibility in establishing policies and programs that make them ideal places for innovation. HSC assists some of these schools in developing healthy lifestyle initiatives with a strong focus on food programs.

To support these programs, HSC develops resources to meet the needs of charter schools. These resources address ways to incorporate wellness into a school culture and to establish a fresh, healthy, cost-effective food program. Additional resources include sample school wellness policies, nutrition education resources, physical education curricula and information about staff wellness programs. HSC is working with stakeholders to identify lessons learned from this effort, and to disseminate the knowledge so that schools around the country can learn from this experience.

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Local farms

Farm-to-school programs collaborate with local farmers and distributors to incorporate fresh produce and locally-grown food into school food programs. These programs may be enhanced by incorporating field trips to farms and gardens as well as classroom lessons on farming, food systems, gardening and cooking to provide students a comprehensive understanding of healthy eating.

HSC supports the establishment of regional procurement programs and is disseminating information about food education curriculum to schools.

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Principals

In this era of standardized testing and No Child Left Behind, it has become difficult for school administrators to make wellness a priority at school. HSC works to engage principals around the concept of educating the whole child and emphasizing the connection between wellness and learning. Because principals are ultimately responsible for implementing school wellness policies, HSC’s work focuses on assisting them in forming wellness teams and making the policy a reality at school.

HSC launched the Principals for Healthy Schools Project to support principals who establish school-based wellness teams, create school-based wellness policies, and implemen programs that promote healthy eating and active lifestyles. With this project, HSC is tapping into the expertise of experienced principals to create a climate in which school administrators take an active role in making wellness a key part of every child’s education.

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Students

As a strategy for engaging students and raising awareness about healthy eating, HSC hosts an annual healthy cooking contest. Fifteen teams of Chicago public high school students prepare a school meal consistent with Balanced Choices, a program designed by Chartwells-Thompson to provide a high standard of health and nutrition for school meals within a stringent budget. It is remarkable to see the healthy, tasty creations that students create for just under one dollar per meal. The contest helps highlight the challenges school districts face in offering healthy school meals to students.

The winning meal in the 2007 contest was served for lunch in high schools throughout Chicago twice during the Spring semester, and the winning meal in the 2008 contest will be served during the Spring semester of 2009. Due to the success of the contest, Chicago Public Schools is now exploring the possibility of regularly offering a student-inspired menu at all high schools.

Learn more about the Cooking up Change Healthy Cooking Contest »

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