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Health & Fitness

Kaiser Permanente Grant to Jackson Avenue Elementary Helps Students Make Healthy Choices

Thriving Schools grants will help make healthy choices easier, more accessible to students and teachers at Jackson Avenue Elementary

Students and teachers at Jackson Avenue Elementary in Livermore are on their way to promoting health and wellness thanks to a new Thriving Schools grant from Kaiser Permanente. The health care organization is awarding 14 Thriving Schools grants across Northern California this year to increase physical activity and improve healthy food offerings for students and teachers at their schools.

Jackson Avenue Elementary’s grant of $23,000 will help with projects that promote health and wellness for the students, staff, and families of the school. The goal is to create a culture of wellness in the school community.

Dubbed the “Healthy Active Stingrays” after the school mascot, the Thriving School grant will help with three projects at Jackson Avenue Elementary:

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  • Creation of a dedicated walking path that will be supported by a Wellness Coordinator who organizes activities to increase physical activities for students, families and staff. The goal is to reach 60 minutes per day of physical activity to improve health and fitness while reducing obesity.
  • Purchase and installation of two hydration stations to increase availability of free, potable water to emphasize the importance of water and reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks. Also launch a “Rethink Your Drink” program. One station has already been installed on the playground.
  • Purchase of a salad bar cart to promote and reinforce healthy eating habits for students, staff and families, by increasing their fruit and vegetable intake. Cooking classes will also provide consistent nutrition messages to families. The goal is to increase vegetable and fruit consumption by 75% by increasing awareness of healthy food options

“This is an exciting opportunity for our school,” said Shari Johnston, principal at Jackson Avenue Elementary. “Our students are truly benefitting from the generous donation from Kaiser Permanente.  We are not only seeing students thinking more about being active but it has also lowered the referrals for discipline during recess and lunch due to having a wellness coordinator out on the playground supporting games and activities. This grant is bringing new energy to our school.”

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.

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“Kaiser Permanente’s 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 is also builds on our many years of work with schools in our community.”

This grant is one of several grants that Kaiser Permanente made recently to Livermore students. In addition to Jackson Avenue Elementary, Kaiser Permanente also awarded support to Marilyn Avenue Elementary for health benefit education and assistance and also to the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District in support of workshops for Latina youth and their mothers focused on health, physical changes and sexual responsibility.

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.

 

 





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