Alliance for a Healthier Generation: Post 1

Reaching youth with a healthy lifestyle message is vital.  A healthy lifestyle incorporates proper eating, physical activity AND gardening.  Educating youth about a healthy lifestyle is especially critical today: nearly one in three U.S. youth are obese.   Using youth to reach youth with the healthy lifestyle message is essential to its success.  Thankfully, there is an organization that is trying to do this in a big way.

Recently, I had the opportunity to travel to Kansas City, Missouri with my daughter, Natalie, so that she could participate in a special meeting.  The opportunity was offered by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which is a collaboration between the William J. Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association.  The Alliance has recently selected twenty youth between the ages of 8 and 17 to serve as its youth advisory board, and to act as spokespersons for the issue of childhood obesity.  The youth are from all across the nation, and have diverse interests, talents, life stories and goals.  But they share one ambition: to help all youth lead a healthier lifestyle. They gathered in nearly the literal center of the nation - Kansas City, Missouri - to tackle one of the most serious issues facing youth: obesity.*

When we arrived in Kansas City after a long day of travel, we didn't know what to expect.  We went down to the pool to meet the youth and their parents. Within minutes, the kids were friends. Since they've left Kansas City, they have been in constant contact via email, text messaging, phone and Facebook, sharing ideas, resources and energy.  Each is commited to making a difference in their community.  Together, they hope to make a difference nationally.  After meeting them, I believe they will.  They are already spreading out, like so many seeds tossed in the wind.  Some are interviewing with newspapers. Some, like my daughter, have started blogging about healthy lifestyle issues.  Others are speaking in public venues, getting youth to sign healthy lifestyle pledge cards, hosting community events to raise awareness of the issue...they are using their passion and creativity to reverse the tide of childhood obesity that threatens to overwhelm our nation's health system.

Their goals are ambitious: to stop the climb in childhood obesity by 2010, and to reverse the trend by 2015.  Laudable goals.  Amazing youth.  I will watch their efforts with great anticipation.  You can, too, by visiting the Alliance's website.

So what's the gardening link?  Gardening provides a way to improve diet and is a form of healthy exercise.  It's a great kid-friendly activity, too.  Gardening is a vital part of a healthy lifestyle.  Is it part of yours?

"A Garden for Everyone.  Everyone in a Garden."

* For all you geography wonks, the actual geographic center of the contiguous (lower) 48 states is about four miles west of Lebanon, Kansas, at 98°35' West 39°50' North.  That's about 458 miles from Kansas City, MO.  Pretty close to center in a nation as big as this! But it was a nice literary device, right?