New Resources Help You Celebrate Healthy Lifestyles

November offered a lot to celebrate: Thanksgiving and Giving Tuesday to name a few. But it also celebrated Healthy Lifestyles Month, which brought families, schools, and communities together to improve the health of our children.

Even if you’re already practicing healthy habits at home, school is where children spend over 1,200 hours per year! That’s why it’s imperative to make sure they are getting nutritious foods and the recommended amount of daily physical activity at school.

Evidence shows that children who attend schools that promote physical activity and healthy eating perform better academically. What’s more, healthy school environments set the stage for children to adopt a healthy lifestyle into adulthood. Yet data shows several challenges schools face when it comes to implementing policies and programs that not only address childhood obesity but also enhance learning, behavior, attendance and more. Parents may want to help, but they don’t always know where to begin.

So what can you do?

Visit ParentsforHealthyKids.org, a new website from Action for Healthy Kids and National PTA, that helps parents and caregivers learn how to engage with school leaders and decision makers on health issues and find ways to help bring more physical activity and healthy eating to the school day.

In addition to providing ways to advocate for your child’s health at school, the website also provides tips, recommendations, recipes, and other ways to live a healthy lifestyle at home. This month, you can find new recipes as well as healthy holiday ideas.

In February, we’ll be announcing grants for parent-led projects, providing funds and technical support to schools and parent groups to implement health and wellness programs that include a family engagement component.

Learn more about these grants and sign up for other news here.

Parents may not fully realize what a powerful force for change they can be in schools when it comes to health and wellness. They have more of a vested interest in student health and learning than probably any other stakeholder, and they’re in a unique position to bring school staff, other parents and community partners together to improve it.

What better way to celebrate a healthy holiday season than to take action today?

Amy Moyer, MPH, RD, is the VP Field Operations with Action for Healthy Kids and mother of two girls.

 Action for Healthy Kids is a National PTA sponsor and has been invited to submit a blog post as part of their engagement with PTA.

Comments

  1. This site and the resources you provide is really nice keep it up.

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