Empowering youth: A Project Healthy Schools and Life in Action Collaboration

Empowerment theory suggests that health promotion requires youth to develop specific skills, positive assets and apply these to become agents of change. We have shown that the standard Project Healthy Schools (PHS) intervention led to increases in exercise, produce consumption, reduced screen time and fatty food intake, and physiological improvements in blood pressure and lipid profiles at 6, 18 and 24 months. We hypothesized that Life in Action (LIA) would empower students to act in a socially responsible manner and may promote behaviors that reduce obesity.

PHS, a 6 year Community-University collaborative to decrease childhood obesity and cardiovascular risk factors through educational and environmental interventions. LIA, a Free the Children initiative, empowers youth to make positive changes through healthy eating, active lifestyles and socially responsible actions. LIA clubs are in their 3 rd year at three of the five Ann Arbor PHS middle schools.

LIA members conducted events focused on wellness and improving socially responsible awareness. Members empowered students to raise $40,790, funding 3 schools, 3 water projects, 2 alternative income projects and donating $30,000 of medical supplies to impoverished global regions.

LIA members participated in activities that enhanced their awareness of world poverty and its effect on health. They also successfully organized healthy activities that made meaningful improvements in the communities they supported. Whether this social empowerment of club members further promotes behaviors that reduce obesity and improve obesity related biomarkers, and the extent to which effects extend to other students at LIA schools remains to be determined.