With childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes on the rise, many curricula have been developed in recent years to promote child health. But all take a back seat to Eat Well & Keep Moving, Second Edition. This skill-building approach to motivating upper-elementary students to eat better and stay active began as a joint research project between the Harvard School of Public Health and Baltimore Public Schools. Today the program is used in all 50 states and more than 20 countries, and it won the Dannon Institute Award for Excellence in Community Nutrition in 2000.
Eat Well & Keep Moving, Second Edition, is a comprehensive, multifaceted program that encompasses the classroom, the cafeteria, and the gymnasium and includes tools to involve the family and the community. This program differs from most in that it addresses nutrition and physical activity simultaneously. And it's proven to be effective at combating a major factor related to childhood obesity: too much time in front of the TV screen. In extensive field tests among students and teachers using the program, children ate more fruits and vegetables, reduced their intake of saturated and total fat, watched less TV, and improved their knowledge of nutrition and physical activity. The program is also well liked by teachers and students.
The program uses existing school resources, fits within most school curricula, promotes literacy across disciplines, contains camera-ready teaching materials, and is inexpensive to implement. You can integrate the lesson plans into core subject areas—for example, you can teach nutrition and physical activity in math, language arts, and science classes. You can easily incorporate the materials into any class you teach, regardless of your current knowledge of health topics.
The six components of the program—classroom education, physical education, school-wide promotional campaigns, food service, staff wellness, and parent involvement—work together to create a supportive learning environment that promotes learning of lifelong good habits. With this complete resource, you can teach students about nutrition and fitness in your classroom—and launch an effective school-wide program if you desire to. Eat Well & Keep Moving can also be part of your school's efforts to meet federally mandated school wellness policies.
With Eat Well & Keep Moving, Second Edition, you get
-46 lesson plans and microunits;
-a CD-ROM from which you can print lessons, units, and over 300 ready-to-use worksheets;
-fun and engaging school-wide campaigns to encourage kids to walk, watch less TV and reduce other screen time, and eat more fruits and vegetables;
-FitCheck, a self-assessment tool to help students track their activity levels; and
-access to the companion Web site
This new edition of Eat Well & Keep Moving incorporates the latest federal recommendations from the 2005 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. It also features two new lessons on consumption of sugary beverages, a key determinant of childhood overweight. The CD-ROM contains manuals and training materials for teachers and school food service staff in both text and PowerPoint presentation formats. In addition, it provides guidance on involving parents and the community, an extensive list of Web-based resources, and a wealth of ready-to-use teaching materials to promote children's health.
You can be confident that when you use Eat Well & Keep Moving, Second Edition, and the new materials, you will equip your students with the knowledge, skills, and supportive environment they need in order to lead more healthful lives by choosing nutritious diets and being physically active.
Lillian W.Y. Cheung, DSc, is a lecturer and director of health promotion and communication in the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. She was the coprincipal investigator for the original Eat Well & Keep Moving controlled trial in Baltimore Public Schools, the curriculum of which became the foundation for the first edition of this book. She was the principal investigator for the Qualitative Study of the School Health Index, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As a registered dietitian and a DSc in nutrition, she has more than 20 years of experience promoting healthy eating and physical activity to the public, with a special emphasis on children.
Dr. Cheung is editorial director of the Nutrition Source Web site at Harvard School of Public Health and is coauthor of Be Healthy! It's a Girl Thing: Food, Fitness, and Feeling Great, a book for girls ages 9 to 13 that promotes a healthy lifestyle. She was also coeditor of Child Health, Nutrition, and Physical Activity (1995). In her leisure time, she enjoys gardening, yoga, cooking, meditation, and chi gong.
Hank Dart, MS, is a health communications consultant who works in prevention and control for the Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine. He has worked for nearly 20 years in health communication and health education, both on the federal level and in academia. He managed the education component of the Eat Well & Keep Moving study, and he developed all the educational materials for the program. He also managed the development of the popular health risk assessment Web site Your Disease Risk, and he coauthored a book titled Healthy Women, Healthy Lives. In his spare time, he enjoys trail running, Nordic skiing, and “writing mediocre poetry.”
Sari Kalin, MS, is a program coordinator in the department of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, where she manages the Nutrition Source, a Web site that explores the latest science on healthy eating. A professional writer and editor for more than 15 years, she recently contributed to a forthcoming textbook for graduate students, Nutrition in the Lifecycle: An Evidence-Based Approach. She was the 2006 recipient of a Schweitzer fellowship to work with Operation Frontline in Boston, where she taught nutrition and cooking classes to adults and youth in underserved communities. She enjoys gardening, fitness walking, cooking healthy foods, and playing jazz piano.
Steven L. Gortmaker, PhD, is a professor of the practice of health sociology at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he has been a faculty member for 30 years. He directs the Harvard School of Public Health Prevention Research Center, whose mission is to design, implement, and evaluate programs that improve physical activity and nutrition, reduce overweight, and decrease chronic disease risk among children. He was the coprincipal investigator for the original Eat Well & Keep Moving controlled trial in Baltimore Public Schools, and he has more than 120 research publications to his credit. He helped develop the first school curriculum that proved, through a randomized controlled trial, to reduce obesity prevalence among girls. This middle school curriculum—Planet Health—focuses on improving diet, increasing physical activity, and reducing television viewing. He enjoys playing sports with his family, golfing, playing tennis, hiking, and reading.
