Former President Bill Clinton has been working to help fight childhood obesity in schools, through the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. The alliance is working with 13,000 schools across the country. The integrated program involves teaching kids to eat better and helps teachers get kids moving more throughout the day. There are also boot camp programs for teachers, to help them better understand the importance of physical activity and improve their own health.
“Kids spend six to eight hours a day in school, so they want school to really emulate the environment they want to produce at home,” Ginny Ehrlich, CEO of Alliance for a Healthier Generation, said on the Today show.
Since its inception, the program has had many success stories from around the country. The alliance provides advice and resources for schools, who are in turn encouraged to create programs that will fit with the needs of their communities. For example, at the Sanger Unified School District in California, physical education teacher Victor Manriquez created a program that uses summer-camp inspired games to get students excited about P.E. This story, along with many others, is featured on the Alliance for a Healthier Generation’s website.
Alliance for a Healthier Generation was founded by the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation in 2005, with the goal of reducing childhood obesity. Clinton’s emergency heart surgery caused him to realized the grave consequences of an unhealthy lifestyle, and hopes that he can use this realization to help the next generation.
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