Preventing obesity via multidisciplinary and environmental change: The Alliance for a Healthier Generation's Healthy Schools Program

The Healthy Schools Program works with schools to achieve environmental, policy, and curricular changes that will help to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic. Components of the Healthy Schools program include health education, physical education/physical activity, systems and policy, school meals, school beverages/competitive foods, school employee wellness and before and after school programs. The program works with over 4,000 schools across the country via intensive hands-on technical assistance or innovative online support. The program incorporates rigorous evaluation into its implementation such that best practices can be gleaned and impact assessed as the program progresses.

This presentation will focus on key findings over the first three years including baseline school policy and multi-year progress toward policy objectives, emerging best practices for achieving environmental change, factors impacting positive changes in schools, and replicable success stories and lessons learned. The session will have a significant impact on current efforts to improve nutrition environments and increase physical activity in schools around the country in that it will inform current practices and discuss tools and strategies that can be applied to additional work. The presentation will also give a preview of impact evaluation data and discuss opportunities for additional research and analysis.