HEAC Program Goals and Design
OVERARCHING GOAL:
To Reduce Disparities in Obesity/Diabetes by Improving Food and Physical Activity Environments for Children
OBJECTIVES:
- To increase opportunities for physical activity for children and families
- To increase opportunities for healthy eating for children and families
The overarching goal of the Healthy Eating, Active Communities Program is to reduce disparities in obesity and diabetes by improving food and physical activity environments for children. Creating healthier eating and physical activity environments in low-income and resource-poor communities requires the adoption of policies, practices and norms that make healthy foods and physical activity opportunities available and appealing. Program success will be measured by demonstrating that disparities related to obesity and diabetes can be reduced when attractive, accessible and affordable opportunities for healthy eating are made available to the community.
The Healthy Eating, Active Communities Program is designed to demonstrate how collaborative approaches can change environmental risk factors. It engages youth, families, community leaders, health professionals and communities in creating healthy environments in order to facilitate healthy choices, particularly in low-income communities. It does this by increasing understanding and awareness of the environmental influences on food choices, physical activity behavior and the health consequences of poor diets and physical inactivity, and by involving communities directly in program and policy efforts to improve local food and physical activity environments. The result of this program will be a reduction in environmental risk factors for obesity and diabetes among school-aged children.
The design of this program is meant to strengthen the public health system for sustained collaborative work to address health disparities. Toward that end, the program includes the following components:
Community Grants - Six local collaboratives have been granted funding to achieve change across five specific sectors: schools, after school programs, neighborhoods, food and beverage media and advertising, and health care. For more information on this component go to Community Grants and Grantee Profiles.
Program Support - To bolster the program, grants will be made to a variety of agencies to provide technical support to local collaboratives and other groups across the state engaged in reducing environmental risk factors for obesity and diabetes. Technical support areas focus on local, state and national policy and advocacy, media strategies, community and youth leadership development, strategies for affecting food and physical environments in schools and communities, and support for the collaborative process. Throughout the program, grantees attend meetings and forums and have networking opportunities, linking local collaboratives with other components of the program. For more information on the Technical Support resources available for this program go to Technical Support.
Statewide Policy Advocacy - State policy change is an essential component to the program. Agencies providing program support and others will participate in a statewide network to develop, implement and sustain statewide policy and advocacy strategies for reducing environmental risk factors for diabetes and obesity in California. For more information on this component, download the Preventing Obesity in California Brochure (
475k PDF Document), part of HEAC Statewide Policy Advocacy.
Communications - A host of communications and public affairs components, coordinated through The California Endowment's Communication and Public Affairs Department, are being used to frame the issue of creating healthy environments for children, and to advance the work of the individual local collaboratives and of the larger program.
Evaluation - An evaluation component will support grantees to determine baseline measures and progress toward goals as well as capture successes and emerging models from the local collaboratives. In addition, the evaluation will measure the impact of the program on environmental factors that influence health, including local policy change, programs instituted, increased participation in programs and services, changes to school foods and decreased local advertising and marketing of unhealthy foods to children. For more information on this component go to Evaluation.
