The California Endowment's Healthy Eating, Active Communities Initiative
The effects of poverty, acculturation and inequality have a dramatic effect on the ability to make changes in lifestyle, and on the healthy options that are available – especially in disadvantaged communities where social, economic and environmental disparities converge.
TheHealthy Eating, Active Communities Initiative (HEAC) seeks to demonstrate that by transforming the food and physical activity environments of resource-poor, low-income income communities it is possible to change norms that foster unhealthy food choices and inactivity. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to shift away from practices and policies that promote the proliferation of unhealthy food choices and inactivity toward policies and practices that position healthy foods and physical activity as the best options.
In March 2005, The California Endowment selected six communities across the state as demonstration sites. Each HEAC site has a collaborative consisting of a school district, broad-based community-based organization and the local public health department. Through a variety of strategies and tactics each of these communities is working toward making sustainable changes in the school, after school, neighborhoods, health care, and marketing and advertising sectors that support healthy eating and opportunities to engage in physical activity.
The six demonstration sites funded through the Initiative are South Los Angeles, Baldwin Park (Los Angeles County), South Shasta County, San Antonio, a community of Oakland (Alameda County), Chula Vista (San Diego County), and Santa Ana (Orange County).
As part of their planning process, each collaborative was charged with setting their key policy goals and strategies. Some of these goals include enforcement of physical education requirements in schools, improving school food programs so that they are in compliance with SB 12 and SB 965, incorporating nutrition and physical activity in after school programs, changing local policies that will result in improvements in parks and other public areas so as to facilitate physical activity, and bringing in farmer’s markets in communities where there are barriers to accessing healthful, nutritious foods, among other goals.
Each collaborative has access to technical assistance providers across a variety of disciplines to help them successfully achieve their goals.
Other components of HEAC focus on local, state and national policy and advocacy, media and industry accountability, youth leadership, research and evaluation, and strategic and integrated communications and public affairs.
For more information, please visit: www.healthyeatingactivecommunities.org.
Accelerating School Activity Promotion
School-based physical activity promotion,
including quality physical education (PE), is an important component of
a comprehensive approach to combatting occurances of childhood obesity
and diabetes. There are numerous opportunities for policy changes in
schools to improve physical education, recess, after school activities,
in-class activity breaks, partnerships, opening school facilities for
community use, promotion of active commuting, and implementation of
evidence-based programs.
The aim of the ASAP program was to
survey the scientific literature and examine model programs to develop
recommendations for effective and cost-effective approaches to school
physical activity promotion that can be applied to low-income schools.
It was decided to focus this research on PE, as PE is the one time when
all students regardless of race or income are entitled to be active. PE
also provides a clear opportunity for statewide policy change. The
Accelerating School Activity methods we have developed to study this
problem can then be applied to other school based activity
opportunities.
Read ASAP reports
