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Abstract #160597

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Marcela Betzer, MPH¹, Caroline Fitz-Roy, MA², and Candace Young, MS². (1) Physical Activity & Nutrition, NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, 2 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10007, 212.676.2552, mbetzer@health.nyc.gov, (2) Bureau of Chronic Disease, Physical Activity and Nutrition Program, NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, 2 Lafayette, New York, NY 10007

New York City public school system serves over one million students in over 1400 schools. The size and scope of the system, and lack of specific resources to assist schools in implementing the NYC School Wellness Policy, which includes the establishment of Wellness Councils in all city schools has created many challenges. Both the Department of Education (DOE) School Health professionals and the Department of Health & Mental Hygiene's (DOH/MH) nutrition professionals have established partnerships with private city-wide and community based organizations to provide schools with Wellness Policy support. The DOH/MH has partnered with FoodChange to help establish Wellness Councils and engage school community leaders to establish new school policies around food and physical activity. The DOE School Health office in the Bronx has partnered with Montefiore School Based Health Program for similar support. Additionally, these departments have engaged components of partner FamilyCook Productions' (FCP) School Wellness Implementation toolkit which includes use of Photovoice techniques, as well as FCP after school programs and family-based culinary/nutrition programs to enhance the scope of support. Action For Healthy Kids (AFHK) in New York State has embarked on an effort to provide an inventory of school wellness policy implementation and evaluate progress in NY State and NYC. Preliminary analysis indicates that many schools fall short of mandating new policies, using the words ‘encourage' and ‘promote' in their stead. Schools are significantly challenged to adhere to existing New York State physical education requirements. Additionally, schools reveal difficulty to gain buy-in across all the school constituencies, hence the need to share more best practices related to gaining school-wide consensus for change. It is clear that the coordinated efforts via these partnerships, while small in scope, have served to assist schools to share best practices and promote healthier school environments with regard to food and physical activity.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion, participants in this session will be able to

• Construct appropriate community partnerships to support schools in their implementation of new Wellness Policies.
• List the various barriers to buy-in of policy changes of different constituencies and know how to address them.
• Utilize their AFHK state team to assist with inventorying and evaluating school wellness implementation and communicating results across the state.

Keywords: Community-Based Public Health,

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No
Any institutionally-contracted trials related to this submission?

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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