Monday, April 5, 2010

Creating a Culture of Wellness in Schools

Two Nashville schools are piloting a project to promote health and wellness. The "Live It! Go For the Red, White and Blue" project is sponsored by Vanderbilt Children's Hospital, Glencliff High School and Wright Middle School.

According to the article in the Tennessean, their objectives are to increase healthy food choices, physical activity and community partnerships. They want to increase knowledge of health/nutrition and encourage families and staff members to adopt healthier habits that will lead to improved health.

Here are some of their project highlights:

• Teachers included 73 healthy lessons in their curricula with the help of 27 community agencies. • Students and staff increased their physical activity by logging 10,000 steps a day — 42,915,374,646 total steps.
• Students increased their fruits and vegetables to five servings of each daily, logging 12,320 servings of fruit, 100 percent fruit juice and vegetables.
• Teachers and staff served as examples to their students by joining a "biggest loser" weight-loss competition. Seventy-four participants tallied a weight loss of 507 pounds.

Lisa Beck is co-chairwoman of Alignment Nashville's Healthy Eating and Active Living Committee and vice president of the YMCA of Middle Tennessee. She is working with other community partners to create a sustainable model of health and wellness education to use throughout Nashville schools. If you want to get involved in this initiative, visit
www.alignmentnashville.org.