It’s been about a year our HEPA team implemented the CATCH curriculum into Afterschool and Camp programs, and we have seen some great preliminary results!
Our preliminary results show that:
- 74% of students showed improvement in nutrition or physical activity knowledge
- 71% of students reported improvement in physical activity, nutritional, or screen time habits
- 97% of parents agreed that the program was beneficial for their student
The Y has a responsibility to the families and communities it serves to build lifelong habits in youth that create healthy futures. Driven by commitment and cause, we’ve pledged to educate kids about healthy lifestyles, model healthy behaviors and cultivate environments that make it easier for kids to make healthier choices. By adopting and implementing Healthy Eating and Physical Activity (HEPA) standards in more than 2,700 Ys across the country, the Y is developing healthy habits in more than 700,000 youth with a goal of nearly 2.1 million by 2015. As a cause-driven organization, the Y isn’t merely looking to incorporate HEPA into its early childhood and afterschool programs, but seeks to improve health for youth in every community the Y serves.
Two of the most important ways that CATCH creates behavior change are by enabling children to identify healthy foods, and by increasing the amount of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) children engage in each day. Our terminology for identifying healthful foods–GO, SLOW and WHOA–has been adopted even colloquially nationwide as a simple means of labeling food’s nutritional content.
Read the full story at catchinfo.org