Healthy Children, Healthy Futures
By Matilda Raffa Cuomo& B.J. Carter

To enable children to have a successful school education, there must be an active partnership with the home, school and the community. A child’s life is centered for most of the day in the school environment. Those children who are at-risk of failing their subjects, dropping out of high school, or have unhealthy eating habits with no exercise, need to have a mentor as soon as possible to give them added support, guidance, and encouragement.

The community has a responsibility to respond to the needs of children. We know that public awareness and concentration to improve our children’s health is strongly needed in these turbulent times. All of us should be concerned about children’s health and address the issue of overweight and obesity.

In 2001, Strang Cancer Prevention Center, the oldest cancer prevention institute in the United States, partnered with Mentoring USA, the largest site-based program in New York City and the first mentoring program providing mentors for foster care youth. Strang and Mentoring USA joined forces with the MetLife Foundation and are currently implementing Healthy Children Healthy Futures, an initiative intended for underserved young people, ages 9-12, in three of our country’s larger urban areas–Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York City. In addition to the program materials for facilitators and children, a training manual was developed by Mentoring USA and used in the training program for the program site facilitators this past summer. The initiative provides children in ten after-school settings with the opportunity to learn about healthy eating and physical activity and motivate them to create compelling messages to encourage their peers to do the same. These health messages by and for children and in the format of posters, billboards, radio, TV and/or internet spots, will be reviewed by peers and then disseminated to other children through a variety of school-based and community-based (CBO) networks.

There are many additional factors that may make urban children at increased risk for obesity. Fewer children in central cities participate in sports and physical activities than those who live outside of central cities. According to a report by the U.S. Census Bureau, 26.3 percent of children aged 6-11 years old living in central cities participate in sports as compared to 39.6 percent outside central cities and 33.5 percent in non-metropolitan areas. Concerns about crime may be a major barrier to becoming more physically active for some children. Parents of color are twice as likely to report their neighborhoods as unsafe, and parents who have a lower opinion of their neighborhood are less likely to have their children participate in sports.

In reality, a majority of Americans are not regularly active, and there has been a rapid increase in prevalence of overweight and obesity among the U.S. population, particularly among children. This is a major public health problem, particularly because of its persistence into adulthood.

Last year, former Surgeon General, Dr. David Satcher, in his “Call to Action” urged communities and schools to join forces to provide programs to improve physical activity and provide healthy food alternatives. That is just what Healthy Children Healthy Futures is doing.#

Matilda Cuomo is Founder and Chair, Mentoring USA. B.J. Carter is Director of the Child Health Initiative at Strang Cancer Prevention Center.