Category: Newsletter

University of Michigan’s Project Healthy Schools and Wayne State University’s Center for Health and Community Impact recently partnered to receive a two year, $500,000 Nutrition and Healthy Lifestyles grant from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund.

The collaboration will expand on the success of the Building Healthy Communities program by creating a district-wide model for school wellness, bringing nutrition and physical activity programing to all the elementary and middle school students in a school district. The grant will also enhance the technological platforms for the Building Healthy Communities program at both the Center for Health and Community Impact and PHS to provide evidence-based resources to as broad an audience as possible, providing more support for parents, communities and other stakeholder groups. Many thanks to the Health Fund for supporting Building Healthy Communities, PHS and the Center for Health and Community Impact in this innovative collaboration. Stay tuned for updates in future newsletters.

To encourage a healthier community, Grass Lake hosted after-school cooking classes for students in grades 6th, 7th, & 8th. The cooking classes were offered approximately once per month and cost about $125 in materials per class. Each class held about 25 students. Participants learned about food preparation, where to obtain local produce, and were introduced to healthy recipes. These simple and fun recipes utilized fresh produce from local sources. Overall, the Grass Lake cooking classes were a hit to those who attended; students showed interest in learning how to cook independently and trying new fruits and vegetables. Grass Lake continues to offer the cooking classes at a cost of $5 per student for each class they attend. Going forward, the wellness teams are looking at ways in order to expand this opportunity in hopes that more students and families could benefit.

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (UP), which contains only 3% of the state’s population, uses the long-distance model of Project Healthy Schools, while schools participating in PHS within 100 miles of Ann Arbor use the local model. With the local model, PHS staff visit schools at least once per month to provide assistance with wellness initiatives and participate in meetings at the school. In contrast, schools utilizing the long-distance model are visit-ed by PHS staff twice per year for training in the fall and a wrap-up in the spring. All other staff assistance and guidance is telecommunicated, approximately once per month. All schools, local and long-distance, are provided access to the PHS Portal, which contains the PHS health curriculum, resources for wellness champions and school staff, and open discussion forums.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the long-distance model, the PHS research team compared the demographics and health behaviors pre- and post-intervention of UP and local students participating in PHS since 2014. Of 21,459 students, 695 (3.2%) were from the UP and utilizing the long-distance model. UP students were less racially diverse (82.1% white v. 64.1%, p=0.001) and more likely to be from low (39.4% v. 31.1%, p<0.001) or middle (60.6% v. 35.0%, p<0.001) socioeconomic status (SES) communities than local students.
Despite the larger proportion of low SES students, at baseline, UP students appeared to have better health behaviors than local students (i.e. more fruits and vegetables, more moderate exercise, and less screen time). Following the PHS intervention, health behaviors improved in both groups; no significant differences were seen in health behavior improvement between UP and local students (see Figure 1). This suggests that the local and long-distance delivery models are equally effective in influencing health behaviors and adds support for utilizing long-distance models to implement school-based wellness interventions in remote communities.

The 2019 Fall Wellness Champion Gathering will probably be most remembered by attendees for the 10 inches of snow that fell in Ann Arbor on November 11. Despite the snow, 23 PHS wellness champions from across the state gathered at the Michigan League to network; hear the latest PHS updates; share best practices; and learn about hot topics in school health, such as vaping and Farm to School.
After a welcome by cardiologist and PHS Founder Kim Eagle, M.D., Lena Gray from the U-M’s MHealthy Tobacco Consultation Services provided an enlightening Vaping 101 presentation. She talked about what vapes look like, the prevalence of vaping among youth, the impact it has on teen health, and how to talk to students about the dangers of vaping. She also provided attendees with links to a number of online resources to share with students who want to quit vaping.

Next, Susan Lahti, the wellness champion at Boyne City Middle fall Wellness Champion Gathering.
School, shared the health education best practices taking place at
her school. The PHS lessons are taught in the fifth grade at this K – 8 school. Lahti, the fifth-grade math and science teacher, often gives students additional projects related to the lessons, such as creating a bulletin board showing the healthy goals set by their families, or having students create and film skits that incorporate the advertising tricks and techniques learned in the Assessing Advertising lesson.
Now in their fourth year of the PHS program, Boyne City holds several district-wide initiatives, including an Apple Crunch Day, both bike and walk to school days, staff vs student games, staff wellness events, and more. Grade-level specific wellness initiatives such as fall and spring hikes, a visit to a farmer’s market, an exercise day, and a field day are held for fifth graders. In addition, the fifth graders help tend the school garden and hoop house and use the vegetables for food tastings. Three- and four-year-olds in the district’s early learning program help harvest the produce during the summer. The school also started a Youth Advisory Committee that brings ideas to the Board of Education for approval. So far, at the committee’s request, the board provided water bottles for all the students and installed water bottle filling stations. They also approved modifications to the school lunch menu to substitute healthier choices.
The day concluded with a self-care presentation by Jill Castro from U-M’s Faculty and Staff Counseling and Consultation Office, followed by a Farm to School presentation by PHS Coordinator Jana Stewart and Neha Shah, a teacher in the Ann Arbor Public Schools.

The Project Healthy Schools’ wellness team at Portland Middle School introduced “Second Chance Breakfast”: an alternative service model to allow more students the opportunity to eat breakfast. Eating a healthy breakfast helps students be more prepared to learn. Students picked up grab-and-go items from the cafeteria, or a mobile food cart, to bring back and eat in their classroom. The result was a 700% increase in their breakfast participation at the first run-through. Following this success, over 200 students continued to be served breakfast either through Before School Breakfast or Second Chance Breakfast. Food Service Director, Steve Pell saw astonishing results, stating, “Doubling the student breakfast counts would have been great, but an increase in participation by 4 or 5 times has exceeded our expectations. Our Food Service staff has been excited to see the large student turnouts for the Second Chance Breakfast.”

On August 20, Project Healthy Schools won the Governor’s Fitness Award in the Extraordinary Organization category. Presented by the Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness, Health and Sports and the Michigan Fitness Foundation, the Governor’s Fitness Awards recognize communities, organizations, and individuals who inspire people to eat healthy and move more where they live, work and play. The Extraordinary Organization award honors organizations with an extraordinary record of giving and stewardship that focuses on improving the environment where people live, learn, work, pray and play.

Project Healthy Schools was one of three finalists for this highly competitive award. The finalists were announced in March, just before the start of the pandemic. The awards gala, originally scheduled for April 23, was rescheduled for August 20 as a virtual awards celebration. Watch the virtual awards presentation video.

Out of 46 schools that received 2019 Michigan School Wellness Awards, 18 of the schools (or 39%) are using the Project Healthy Schools (PHS) program. Most of these schools started PHS as part of the Building Healthy Communities partnership with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. The Michigan School Wellness Award program is a collaboration between the Michigan Department of Education, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the United Dairy Industry of Michigan, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Michigan Action for Healthy Kids and the Healthy Kids, Healthy Michigan Coalition.

The program encourages schools statewide to create healthy school environments by establishing school wellness teams, completing the Healthy School Action Tools and implementing sustainable policy and environmental changes. Schools that have achieved all of these elements are recognized with the top level Gold award. The winning PHS schools include:

Gold Award Winners:

• Allendale Middle School, Allendale
• John D. Pierce Middle School, Waterford
• MacDonald Middle School, East Lansing
• Negaunee Middle School, Negaunee
• Portland Middle School, Portland

Silver Award Winners:

• Cherryland Middle School, Elk Rapids
• Creekside Middle School, Dexter
• DeWitt Middle School, DeWitt
• East Middle School, Plymouth
• Grass Lake Middle School, Grass Lake
• Powell Middle School, Washington
• St. Charles Borromeo Catholic School, Coldwater
• St. Mary Catholic School, Pinckney
• Thunder Bay Junior High School, Alpena
• University Preparatory Academy Middle School, Detroit
• Vista Charter Academy, Grand Rapids

Bronze Award Winners

• Bentley Middle School, Burton
• Pittsford Middle/High School, Pittsford

Congratulations to the above schools, their administrators, wellness champions and wellness teams for providing a shining example of what it takes to build a healthy school community.