As the Executive Director of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition I am profoundly aware of the importance of making physical activity and nutrition accessible and affordable for all Americans, especially children. This is a multifaceted problem, and I’ll address several dimensions of this issue in this discussion. 

Availability of facilities that provide healthy, affordable food in our communities is a necessity.  If we do not have facilities within our neighborhoods where we can obtain fresh fruits and vegetables at affordable prices, then kids are going to continue to buy the Twinkies.  We’ve got to incent our retail establishments to be able to come into communities. I think we’ve seen success where we’ve put forth the effort in this area.

The school environment has a strong influence on whether physical activity and nutrition are accessible to children. Kids spend a good part of their days, weeks, and years in school.  We’ve got to continue pushing for policy change as it relates to physical education and school meals.

In many cases we are going in the wrong direction. Physical education is being cut out of schools, and it is so very important.  Many states are passing policies mandating physical activity. This time could be recess, before or after school programs, or physical education.  The unintended consequence  we are hearing from school officials is “we are doing our 15 minutes of recess and then kids are walking between classes, so we are just going to cut PE because nobody said we have to do PE.”  Physical education is a curricular area.  It is an educational area that should be taught by a certified physical education teacher.   It is not recess.

When advocates like myself come in and say we need more physical education, what we are really saying is we need more quality PE.

We know it can be done.  Often we hear that test scores are the priority and we only have so many minutes in each school day, but we have examples of schools that have made it a priority where kids are getting 30 minutes of physical education every day and their test scores are increasing.  For more information regarding this, reference the Centers for Disease Control and the National Association for Sport and Physical Education report on academics and physical education. There is an increasing body of research that shows definitively that kids who are physically active perform better academically. It can decrease their delinquency and behavioral issues, as well as help them concentrate so they tend to perform better on tests.

Has your organization worked to improve access to the health of America’s children through physical activity and nutrition? How? To learn how you can get involved, visit www.presidentschallenge.org and become a President’s Challenge Advocate today.

Note:  The President’s Council’s name was recently changed by Executive Order from President Obama to the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition (PCFSN) in recognition of the fact that good nutrition must go hand in hand with fitness and sports participation in order to achieve a healthy lifestyle.

Walk through a military commissary and you are likely to see children happily playing hopscotch in the fruit and vegetable section. To help promote physical activity as part of the “Eat Healthy and Be Active Your Way” program in commissaries, the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) has installed a permanent hopscotch game display on the floor in the produce section of most commissaries. This was implemented to help demonstrate the link between physical activity and making healthy choices when shopping for food.

The hopscotch game is making an impact on children such as John Murray Jr. John’s mom says, “Whenever we go to the commissary he is so excited and always asks, ‘Can I hopscotch in the apples?’ The game allows John to play and I use it to let him pick out the fruit he wants to take home.”

 Recently John’s mom shared a shopping adventure where he was already out of the buggy skipping towards produce saying, "Mama I get to hopscotch, yeah for me." He rounded the corner and she followed him. He had stopped and was looking back at her with big tears in his eyes and said, "Mama I can't get to hopscotch no more," as there was a pallet of watermelons covering the hopscotch game. John’s mom tried to reassure him that maybe next time he could play hopscotch. However he said, "No Mama I always get to hopscotch real good two times and pick out my fruit from the hopscotch."

Around that time Mr. Raymond Lane, Deputy Store Director came by, and seeing the big tears in John’s eyes he asked what was wrong. John pointed to the pallet of watermelons covering the display and replied, "I can't hopscotch in the apples today." Mr. Lane quickly had the pallet of watermelons moved and John was free to hopscotch.

Fast friends were made that day between Mr. Lane and John Jr. Mr. Lane gave him his card and told him, "Now you are my hopscotch checker; if the game is ever covered, you come and let me know and I will fix it." Now when Mrs. Murray and John Jr. visit the commissary they make sure to let Mr. Lane know that "the hopscotch in the apples is okay." 

During 2009 DeCA and HHS signed a proclamation recognizing that eating healthy and being active are two things Americans can do to improve their health and are keys to a healthy lifestyle. In support of the proclamation DeCA is coordinating in-store displays and promotions in commissaries.  The hopscotch game display is an environmental intervention designed to encourage children and families to be active along with making healthy choices while shopping in the commissary. DeCA is currently looking at the use of displays to determine how they are impacting choices in commissaries while the hop scotch game display is being enjoyed by children of all ages in commissaries.

What kind of environmental interventions have worked for your organization?