A program meant to fight childhood obesity in some Syracuse City Schools is expanding, and adding a new component. The Growing Healthy Hearts program will soon be in seven schools in the district, which has a 37% childhood obesity rate among students.
The program emphasizes the importance of eating right and being active in order to stay healthy. Emanie Cook, a fifth-grader at McKinley-Brighton, likes it.
"Because I do feel like if older kids do it, it will reflect on younger kids. Little kids like to eat snacks and stuff and if we show them it’s not healthy, then they’ll follow us and stuff like that," Cook said.
Physical Education teacher Ed Straub said the key is rewarding the kids and repeating the messages over and over.
"The kids really buy into it," Straub said. "They love the charms and the messages that go along with the charms. So it helps us to double down on the message that we’re sending."
The program, sponsored in part by the American Heart Association, is also moving beyond teaching kids the importance of eating right and exercising. Franklyn Fry, executive director of the Syracuse chapter of the American Heart Association, said the agency is worried about the vaping epidemic that is attracting more and more younger children. So a new message this year will explain to kids that e-cigarettes are not harmless.
"The brain doesn’t fully develop until 25, so anything that's happening in the body before that age has a potential impact on learning, cognitive behavior, etc. So our focus is to tell kids, this is dangerous," said Fry.
This e-cigarette focus is part of a new national Heart Association initiative to educate children about vaping. It includes a $20 million research grant to determine how vaping impacts children’s health.
