Overview

The American Dietetic Association Foundation, the President’s Challenge, and the General Mills Foundation are partnering to improve youth nutrition and fitness through the General Mills Champions for Healthy Kids initiative. A key component of the initiative is the Champions for Healthy Kids grants, where the General Mills Foundation will award 50 grants, $10,000 each, to not-for-profit organizations with innovative programs that help youth develop both good nutrition and fitness habits. Utilizing its resources and expertise on nutrition issues, the American Dietetic Association Foundation will play a critical role in evaluating the proposals. The President’s Challenge will provide a model program, the President’s Active Lifestyle Award, as part of the initiative. Other components of the initiative include sponsorship of the President’s Active Lifestyle Awards, developing nutrition and fitness mentoring models, and sharing best practices.

Grant Awards

Fifty grants of $10,000 each will be awarded to 501(c)(3) and 509(a) status not-for-profit organizations and agencies, health departments, government agencies, schools and school districts and Native American tribes. Grant applications are due January 15, 2010 at 5:00pm CST and grants will be awarded in May of 2010.

Champions Grant Program Goal

The goal of the General Mills Champions for Healthy Kids grants is to encourage communities in the United States to improve the eating and physical activity patterns of young people, ages 2-18. Grants will be awarded to nonprofit organizations and agencies working with communities that demonstrate the greatest need and likelihood of sustainable impact on young people’s nutrition and activity levels through innovative programs.

Rationale

The partnership and the grants were developed because the health of young people in the United States is a critical issue for our country. Community-initiated programs aimed at improving nutrition and physical activity levels with youth can have a long-term impact on young people’s health and well-being. Grants will only be awarded to programs that address both physical activity and eating habits, since each contribute to the overall health of youth (1, 2).

The benefits of a healthy lifestyle for youth, including optimal nutrition and physical fitness, are:

• Improved school performance and prevention of nutritional deficiencies (3);
• Improved strength, heart and lung health, and mental and emotional health (3, 4);
• Prevention of overweight, obesity, and diabetes in childhood and adulthood (4);
• Prevention of risk factors into adulthood such as high cholesterol, lower bone density, and decreased fitness levels that can lead to heart disease, cancer, and osteoporosis; and (5-8),
• The development of healthy lifestyle habits that persist into adulthood, and thus, have a long-term impact on the health and well-being of future generations (9).

Recent surveys indicate that the eating and physical activity patterns of young people need improvement.

• Less than half of our young people are meeting each of the basic recommendations for a healthy diet (10, 11).
• Only about one in five high school students eat the recommended five or more servings of fruits and vegetables each day (11, 12).
• Only about one in six get adequate servings of milk products (12).
• American children and adolescents eat less than one serving of whole grain per day (13).
• About one in three high school students reported getting insufficient physical activity. Physical activity levels begin to decline, particularly for females, around age 12, making this a critical goal for youth programs (14, 15).

Although there are many programs that focus on improving the health habits of youth, some are more effective than others. Many nutrition education programs have focused just on increasing knowledge about healthy dietary patterns. Yet increased knowledge alone does not correspond well to better eating or physical activity patterns (15, 16). Research shows that successful nutrition and physical activity programs have clear program objectives and address each of the following factors (14, 17-25):

Influencing Factors
Influencing factors are the key factors that influence the behavior patterns of youth. Programs should consider these factors to guide the strategies chosen for the grant program proposal. Consider factors from the following three domains:

Personal factors include the target audience’s values, knowledge, perceptions, and benefits of the desired behaviors. Consider the following questions during program development:

• What does the target audience value more in their lives than healthy eating and physical activity?
• What does the target audience already know or not know about physical activity and healthy eating?
• What are their perceptions of exercise and healthy eating and how could the program make them more positive?
• What are reasons the target audience would want to eat well and be physically active?

Behavioral factors influence and support the programs desired behavior changes. Two key concepts in this area are skills building and intentions to engage in a particular behavior. Questions to ask in program development include:

• What is your target audience already doing that might be compatible (or incompatible) with healthier eating and physical activity patterns and how can the program help change that?
• What specific skills do they need to learn and practice in order to adopt the promoted behaviors?
• Can you provide some incentives or rewards to attract and encourage them to adopt the behaviors you are seeking to change?
• Would other programmatic strategies, such as commitments, pledges or goal setting, help promote a young person’s intentions to change eating and activity patterns?

Social/environmental factors promote change in a young person’s environment at school, home, or in the community in order to enhance the process of making behavior changes. They include the importance of using role models, increasing social support, and creating opportunities to support healthy behavior change. Consider these questions while developing your program:

• Can the program involve specific role models that would be interesting or attractive to the target audience?
• How could parents and peers be used to provide social support for those in the program?
• How can you increase the opportunities for your target audience to eat a balanced diet and engage in more physical activity?

In addition to these influencing factors, effective programs should be anchored in models of behavior change (17). Several large research projects have demonstrated success in changing young people’s eating and physical activity patterns based on these models. Through the General Mills Champions for Healthy Kids initiative, grant applicants will be able to have access to information and resources from these model programs that can be used to replicate program components, or develop new ideas for effective programs. The Resources section of the Champions Grant website provides a complete description of these model programs.