Attacking Obesity and Better Eating Habits At the School Level – HealthCorps Founded by Dr. Oz

With the focus on both education and healthy eating and exercise habits this program makes sense. The non profit organization was actually started by Dr. Oz back in 2007 and I just became aware, and that is probably due to the fact that I watch very little television but I am on the internet quite a bit and have quite a few posts about Dr. Oz on the blog.

So far there are 50 high schools that are enrolled and below are a couple of videos that explains more on how the program works. The link here will show you on the map where the current enrolled schools are located. We have one in California too. There’s also a page where you can read up and donate.

This is very cool and from when I think way back to home economics class I had, this would have been a real plus and add that to what we know today about healthy eating it looks like a winner. In watching the video, one of the students talks about how much healthier the food is compared to the greasy food that is normally available at the school.

I can’t see any school losing if they can work out the funds to bring in such a program as everyone talks about needing a helping hand at schools to start kids out on the right track. BD

From the website:

HealthCorps®, a proactive health movement founded by heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, is fighting the obesity and mental resilience crisis by getting American students and communities across the country to take charge of their health. Our three priorities are:

Educating the Student Body– our in-school program to empower and educate youth and faculty about their bodies, their environments and their abilities to affect them.

Like a Peace Corps for Health, HealthCorps is a national service and peer mentoring initiative. In high schools, HealthCorps “Coordinators” empower teens in underserved populations to make simple lifestyle changes to enhance their well-being and resilience and take the message to friends, families and neighbors.

Recent college graduates become HealthCorps "Coordinators" for two years and defer medical school or graduate health program studies to peer-mentor as public service - helping teens, their teachers and their families become health activists through:

Our fun, experiential curriculum, developed with leading health and integrative medicine experts; Nutrition, Fitness and Mental Resilience in-school seminars and after school clubs.
Pedometer contests for students and teachers
Tools to create educated consumers: food label, portion and ingredient label deciphering
Tools to build mental resilience: stress reducers, self esteem and hope builders
Practical exercise like walking, yoga and simple strength building routines
Service learning projects to teach other students HealthCorps lessons
Field trips to organic farms, hospitals, museums
Teen Iron Chef cooking lessons and competitions
Parent’s Nights

Creating a FitTown– Our community outreach to connect and empower citizens and organizations to bring about awareness and affect change through community based projects and events such as:

Our photovoice projects to explore and document community life
Built-environment improvements
Highway to Health Fair & Festivals

HealthCorps Coordinators form important ties with public health departments, school systems, community foundations, the business community, city food banks and other community service organizations to coalesce efforts. FitTown efforts are guided by key tools developed by the Center for Disease controls: the School Health Index (SHI) and the Community Health Index (CHI).

Advocacy: Our public outreach at the national, state and city levels to:

Advocate for policy shifts that put health and physical education back into the core curriculum for the American education system;
Advocate for policy shifts that move us towards safer environments affecting health (food systems, transportation systems, public space design systems, more nature) that encourage and enable people to be more physically active.