What We Do - Action for Healthy Kids
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Creating healthy schools

Healthy habits contribute to lower risk of disease, improved emotional health, increased focus and learning, and other qualities that contribute to a better life. So how do we ensure kids are learning healthy habits? By creating healthy schools.

Why Schools?

Kids spend over 1,200 hours per year in school. The school community — including teachers, staff, parents, and volunteers — provides invaluable information, support, and modeling of healthy behaviors that shape kids’ lives and helps them learn and thrive.

Our Approach

We bring together parents and educators and equip them with the tools and resources they need to support happier, healthier kids.

  • In underserved communities that have historical barriers to family engagement in schools, we use a holistic approach to build the capacity of families, schools and school districts to work together to support kids’ health and well-being through long-term, deep-impact partnerships. Learn more about our family-school partnership model.
  • By offering school grants, in-depth resources, and personalized support to schools and districts in these communities, we help them create sustainable programs and policies to support students’ physical and emotional health.
  • Our three key program areas, selected because of their impact on kids’ current and future health and ability to thrive, are food access and nutrition education, physical activity and active play, and social emotional health and risk behavior prevention. Read more about our NourishEd, EnergizEd, and ConnectEd programs.
  • By building the capacity for individual behavior change and systemic changes in communities, we ultimately help kids eat better, stay active, strengthen coping skills, and make responsible, healthy decisions.

 

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Our growing network of healthy school champions includes over 140,000 people and 50,000 schools nationwide. Our approach works.

Ready to take action? See how you can get involved today.

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