At their recent 2015 Leaders Summit, the Alliance for a Healthier Generation celebrated its 10-year anniversary and acknowledged schools, industry leaders, corporate partners and programs that have been exemplary in their work toward promoting childhood health.
The Alliance recognized Kaiser Permanente for its efforts in support of children’s health, namely: for being part of the “solution to the childhood obesity epidemic, for its industry leadership promoting evidence-based public health solutions and its innovation creating and fostering positive change on behalf of children’s health.”
Kaiser Permanente chairman and chief executive officer, Bernard J. Tyson, attended the summit where he accepted the Alliance’s “Healthier Generation Corporate Hero Award” on behalf of the nearly 180,000 employees and 20,000 physicians at Kaiser Permanente whose work helps the organization live out its mission to improve the health of people living in communities across the country.
To evaluate the schools they work with, the Alliance uses a meticulous set of standards to consider each school’s achievements around serving healthy school food, encouraging physical activity, improving employee wellness and implementing wellness policies.
Six of the schools recognized by the Alliance at its Leaders Summit are schools that also participate in Kaiser Permanente’s Thriving Schools initiative:
Alvord Unified School District, Riverside and Corona, CA
West Contra Costa County Unified School District, Richmond, CA
- Montalvin Manor Elementary, Bronze
Central Unified School District, Fresno, CA
- William Saroyan Elementary School, Bronze
Hillsboro Unified School District, Hillsboro, OR
- Mooberry Elementary, Bronze
Earlier this year, the Thriving Schools blog published a story about Albert Gonzales, a seventh grader who attends Loma Vista Middle School (LVMS), which received a silver designation from the Alliance this year. Gonzales originally joined the school’s running club to lose weight but soon found that such physical activity was accompanied by a whole host of benefits – a positive sense of self, accomplishment and new values around well-being.
Working Together
From a young age, we are taught that we can accomplish much more by collaborating with others than if we were to work by ourselves. The successful partnership between Kaiser Permanente Thriving Schools and Alliance for a Healthier Generation validates this notion.
Broadly, the Alliance for a Healthier Generation joins forces with schools, communities, and organizations to work toward reducing the prevalence of childhood obesity and encouraging kids to live healthy lives. The Alliance’s evidence-based Healthy School Program seeks to aid schools in creating and sustaining healthy environments, with emphasis on supporting physical education, health education and nutrition.
Thriving Schools brings countless organizational assets to the table that amplify the Alliance’s initiatives. These include clinical practices, community benefit work, concentration on upstream determinants of health, and evaluation efforts. In the words of the Alliance’s CEO, Kaiser Permanente has “added tremendous insight and focus on a rigorous evaluation of what is working and using that to drive the work that we’re doing together.”
Together, the Alliance and Thriving Schools equip schools with the knowledge and tools to make great strides in healthy eating and active living. Kaiser Permanente is committed to supporting the health of schools in all of our regions with a focus on healthy eating, physical activity, school employee wellness and positive school climate. Through our partnership with the Alliance, we are reaching more than 230,000 students in 335 schools across 21 school districts throughout California, Oregon, Washington, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., with additional reach in other regions.
