This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Kaiser Permanente Grants Will Help Local Students, Teachers Be More Active, Eat Healthier

Thriving Schools grants totaling over $320,000 will help make healthy choices easier, more accessible to students and teachers at Northern California schools

Students and teachers in Southern Alameda County will be able to increase physical activity and improve healthy food offerings for students and teachers, thanks to a $20,700 Thriving Schools grants from Kaiser Permanente.

The grant will help 14 low-income schools across Southern Alameda County be more active, focusing on Hayward, by partnering with after-school programs, summer camps, and parent groups. Across Northern California, 13 other Thriving Schools grants totaling $322,723 were recently awarded by Kaiser Permanente.

Find out what's happening in San Leandrowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

“We are committed to the health of teachers, students, and the community," said Dr. Christine Boynton, Executive Director of the Alameda County Office of Education, which is overseeing their Thriving Schools grant. "This grant will enable Hayward schools to increase physical activity for the students through Kaiser Permanente's Fire Up Your Feet program. Since we know that physical activity helps kids learn, Kaiser Permanente's support will benefit students in so many ways."

The grants are just one part of Kaiser Permanente' new Thriving Schools initiative to build healthy, sustainable communities by creating a culture of health in schools. It provides prevention-focused, evidence-based wellness tools—at no cost—to any school. By helping students, staff, and teachers be more active and eat more healthfully, schools can have a positive impact on the health of the community and likely improve academic and professional performance at the same time.

Find out what's happening in San Leandrowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Dr. Paul Espinas, a pediatrician at Kaiser Permanente Hayward Medical Center, said the Thriving Schools website, http://thrivingschools.kaiserpermanente.org, features an abundance of low- or no-cost ideas teachers and staff can use to build healthy school environments. Using healthy foods served in fundraisers and in-class rewards for children are two examples.

“Thriving Schools also helps teachers integrate physical activity into learning because we know that when youngsters are active, they're less likely to be absent, their grades are better, and their test scores are higher,” Espinas said.

In San Jose, at Aptitud Community Academy at Goss, students will have access to new water "hydration stations," and get water bottles to fill up; important components for the increased physical activity that the school is also planning to add through their $23,000 grant.

Folsom Cordova Unified School District will kick off the new year by implementing a breakfast cart, increasing support for walking clubs at the school, and working with local farm and other partners to provide students with nutrition education.

Two San Rafael elementary schools, Laurel Dell and Short Elementaries, The Healthy Choices, Healthy Families Leads to Healthy Scholars project will offer students and families playground equipment, Junior Coaches Playworks trainings, and partner with local agencies to bring families educational components around nutrition.

The complete list of grantees includes:

·        Alameda County Office of Education, Hayward

·        Aptitud Community Academy at Goss, San Jose

·        Elk Grove Unified School District

·        Folsom Cordova Unified School District, Folsom

·        Laurel Dell and Short Elementary Schools, San Rafael

·        Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District

·        Mid-Peninsula Boys & Girls Club, Daly City

·        Buena Vista Horace Mann, San Francisco,

·        Rosemary School, Campbell

·        San Joaquin County Office of Education

·        San Juan Unified School District, Sacramento

·        Santa Rosa City Schools

·        Temperance-Kutner Elementary School, Clovis

·        YMCA of the East Bay, West Contra Costa

“The Kaiser Permanente Thriving Schools initiative is focused on making healthy choices easy, accessible, and a part of everyday life in our schools,” said Yvette Radford, vice president of External and Community Affairs in Northern California. “This initiative is one of the cornerstones of our organizational commitment to the total health of our members and the communities that we serve. It also builds on our many years of work with schools in our community.”

Thriving Schools also features Fire Up Your Feet, a new online program developed by the Safe Routes to School National Partnership in collaboration with Kaiser Permanente and the National PTA. The program’s goal is to improve the health of students, teachers, and families by encouraging safe walking, bicycling, and other physical activities with online tools free for anyone to use.  

For more information, visit kp.org/communitybenefit/ncal. To learn more about Thriving Schools, visit kp.org/thrivingschools. 

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?