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Related Programs: Comprehensive School Nutrition Policy A coordinated school nutrition policy provides the framework for ensuring that students attending schools in Philadelphia receive nutrition education messages that are reinforced throughout the school environment. Kindergarten Initiative This initiative targets low-income kindergarten students through the classroom, supplying a curriculum that integrates nutrition into their daily lessons and offering healthy snacks grown by local farmers.

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Healthy Times

The Healthy Times newspaper program engages children in some of the most pressing nutrition and health issues facing their generation today. In Southeastern Pennsylvania, about 40% of children are at-risk of becoming obese — defined as a BMI of 85 or higher — according to a 2006 survey by the Philadelphia Health Management Corp. (PHMC). These children are statistically more likely to develop heart disease, type 2 diabetes and other chronic illnesses.

The Healthy Times program empowers elementary and middle school students to promote health and literacy in their school communities. In this service-learning program, students are taught basic journalistic skills to report on and write about health-related activities and topics of interest to their own school. Other students and their families benefit as well because the publications heighten health awareness, encourage school health efforts and provide reading enrichment.

The program builds on an initiative that began at Hillcrest Elementary School in Upper Darby in 2003. Marian Uhlman, a former Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer specializing in health issues, developed the program with Susan Spencer, who is now a literacy coach in the Upper Darby School District. Marian directs the program for The Trust.

Since the fall of 2006, nine more healthy newspapers have been launched in Norristown, Philadelphia, Reading and Upper Darby elementary schools as part of an ongoing pilot program. During the 2007-2008 school year, the student staffs produced a total of 29 issues that were distributed through classroom teachers to about 5,000 children and their families. “We read about healthy snacks and the new playground,” wrote one student in a Healthy Times school. “I’m starting to eat healthier.”

The goal is to build a student-driven health newspaper model that can be replicated and adapted by schools and community groups in the Philadelphia region – and beyond. We welcome the support of foundations and businesses.

To find out more about the Healthy Times project, please contact Marian Uhlman at muhlman@thefoodtrust.org An article about the program also can be accessed in the spring 2008 newsletter of the Chestnut Hill Health Care Foundation at: www.chhcfoundation.org/newsletter.htm