Harnessing community partnerships to expand the reach of a community benefit program to reduce childhood obesity

The community benefit requirement under the Affordable Care Act creates an important opportunity for hospitals and community organizations to work together to address unmet community needs. After identifying childhood obesity as a priority area for intervention, Kishwaukee Hospital set a goal to promote nutrition education and greater physical activity for children and to create supportive policy changes in schools and afterschool programs. To accomplish this, the hospital has established a wide network of community partners including the local school districts, the Dekalb County Health Department, the YMCA, and Northern Illinois University. Working together, these organizations have secured funding, provided materials and training, and developed creative strategies for implementing and sustaining an evidence-based physical activity and nutrition education program in the community. One such strategy has been to establish a training program for university students to teach health education lessons in public school classrooms for course credit. As a result of these combined efforts, over 25,000 children were exposed to at least 6 lessons on healthy eating and physical activity during 2014.  Behavioral outcomes included improvements in the ability to identify healthy foods and activities, screen time, number of days being physically active, and nutrition knowledge and behavior.  By incorporating elements of the Health in All Policies approach - stakeholder engagement, intersectoral collaboration, the use of strategies that are mutually beneficial, and the creation of policies and process changes to ensure sustainability – Kishwaukee Hospital and its partners are creating environments supportive of healthy eating and physical activity to benefit children throughout their service area.