RD282 - Obesity Prevention Funding For Community-based Organizations in the Commonwealth


Executive Summary:
During the 2010 General Assembly session, the General Assembly directed the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth Board of Trustees to devote at least $1 million from VFHY’s budget exclusively to childhood obesity prevention efforts on the community level.

The majority of this funding was dedicated to VFHY’s Healthy Communities Action Teams (HCAT) program. VFHY awarded more than $1.25 million in HCAT grants over FY 2011 and 2012 to establish and/or support 22 local community coalitions across Virginia to fight childhood obesity. Funding and training provided by VFHY through the HCAT grants allow community organizations to implement identified promising practices in childhood-obesity prevention suggested by the national Institute of Medicine (IOM) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In FY 2011, HCAT grant recipients will receive $627,638.50. (A list of grant recipients can be found on page 8 of this report.)

HCAT grantees will implement a variety of CDC-suggested strategies for childhood obesity prevention, such as working with or establishing farmers’ markets to increase community access to fresh produce; increasing physical activity in children enrolled in afterschool programs; creating and maintaining community gardens; and establishing safe neighborhood playgrounds. HCAT grantees, which were selected by an independent grants application review panel, will be required to comply with VFHY evaluation and reporting procedures.

Communities being served by HCAT grantee programs include: Alexandria, Blacksburg, Carroll County, Charlottesville, Danville, Floyd County, Fredericksburg, Galax, Gate City, Giles County, Hampton Roads, Henry County, Jamestown, Lee County, Martinsville, McLean, New River Valley, Norfolk, Northern Neck, Norton, Petersburg, Pittsylvania County, Prince William County, Rappahannock, Richmond, Roanoke, Scott County, Smyth County, Staunton, Suffolk, Tazewell County, Williamsburg, Wise County and Yorktown.

VFHY will also be offering Healthy Youth Day mini-grants to communities all across Virginia to hold events to promote increased physical activity and better nutrition for children. Established by a Virginia General Assembly resolution, Virginia Healthy Youth Day is held every Jan. 20 by the Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth (VFHY) and promotes healthy lifestyles for Virginia’s children, including eating right, exercising and not using tobacco products. The first annual Virginia Healthy Youth Day in 2010 was a great success: Virginia First Lady Maureen McDonnell was the keynote speaker and the event featured American Family Fitness instructors leading nearly 300 schoolchildren in exercises on the State Capitol lawn. Mascots from major Virginia universities including the University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Richmond were also in attendance. The Virginia Department of Health’s CHAMPION obesity-prevention division assisted during the event, handing out pedometers and jump ropes to the children.

Other major VFHY childhood obesity prevention initiatives include the continuation and expansion of the Step Royale pilot program established by VFHY’s Marketing department to encourage physical activity among teens in urban, African-American communities through step dancing competitions. Tested in the Norfolk area from November 2009 to June 2010, Step Royale showed successful initial results in gathering participation among teens who were previously not physically active and/or not interested in participating in traditional team sports. With an infusion of $100,000 from VFHY’s dedicated childhood obesity funds, Step Royale will be expanded into more communities throughout Hampton Roads in FY 2011.

VFHY’s Marketing department is devoting an additional $100,000 to a childhood-obesity prevention campaign called ActOut that will be implemented by teen volunteers in VFHY’s Y Street program. Y Street is VFHY’s volunteer teen-led action group, believed to be the largest of its type in the nation. Since 2004, VFHY has trained more than 4,000 high-school students to participate in Y Street. ActOut will encourage teens and children to increase physical activity through a variety of projects in communities across Virginia, including: Alexandria, Appomattox, Ashburn, Blacksburg, Bridgewater, Mechanicsville, Midlothian, Norfolk, Rocky Mount, Tazewell, Virginia Beach and Yorktown. For the ActOut Campaign, Y Street members will focus on strategies to motivate peers to engage in diverse, fun, new physical activities in their local area. In their ActOut projects, Y Street members will collect surveys and video testimonials, post web comments and advertisements, collect discount agreements from local businesses and organize introductory sessions to encourage young people to try different types of physical activities. The objective is to provide young people with positive experiences that will lead to long-term adoption of new physical activities.

The balance of VFHY’s $1 million in dedicated childhood obesity funding will be applied to administrative costs for grants management, trainings related to the VFHY childhood obesity prevention initiatives such as the HCAT grants, the Step Royale program and Y Street’s ActOut campaign, evaluation and a statewide youth survey to measure factors related to obesity.