GRANHOLM - Healthy Kids, Healthy Michigan Mini-Grants Awarded to Three School Districts

LANSING - The Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) recently awarded Lansing, Jackson, and Taylor school districts with Healthy Kids, Healthy Michigan mini-grants of $25,000 each to establish a nutrition and physical activity policy that would help reduce childhood obesity.

The districts also will have staff representatives on the Childhood Obesity Prevention Workgroup, a multidisciplinary group composed of executive-level decision makers from government, public and private sector, nonprofit organizations, health care, communities and schools. The workgroup, led by Michigan Surgeon General Dr. Kimberlydawn Wisdom, will be charged with creating Michigan's statewide policy agenda.

"We want to give these school districts the necessary resources needed to develop a policy for healthy eating and exercise," said Dr. Wisdom. "Obesity increases the risk of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes, and cancer. We want to reduce these risks and teach our children to eat healthy and engage in regular physical activity."

The grants were made possible after Governor Jennifer M. Granholm received a one-year, $100,000 grant from the National Governor's Association through the Healthy Kids, Healthy America program. The program is designed to provide the nation's governors with the opportunity and means to reduce childhood obesity in schools and communities in their state.

"Improving the health of all Michiganians begins with improving the health of our kids," said Granholm. "This initiative will help us develop programs that stop or reduce childhood obesity and enact meaningful change to improve the health of our youngest citizens."

According to the 2005 Michigan Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 33 percent of students in grades 9 to 12 did not participate in the recommended amount of weekly physical activity, 36 percent watched three or more hours of television on an average school day, and only 38 percent attended physical education class one or more days during an average school week.

During the past four decades, obesity rates have soared among all age groups, more than quadrupling among children ages 6 to 11. Due to obesity, it is estimated that one in three children born in the United States in 2000 will develop Type 2 diabetes at some point in their lives - a 30 percent increase in risk for boys and 40 percent increase for girls.

For more information, please visit www.michigan.gov/cvh.