The Walkers Foundation has granted $30,000 to the Children’s Health Task Force’s Health4Youth programme.
This is the third successive year the foundation has given a grant to the programme.
The Health4Youth programme started in 2009 as a pilot project at the Clifton Hunter and John Gray schools, initiated by the Children’s Health Task Force, a multidisciplinary team of volunteers and healthcare professionals from the Health Services Authority and the private sector.
The project was set up to combat the dramatic rise in the number of Cayman’s children who are either obese or at risk of becoming obese.
In 2011, of the 326 students in these schools who were measured, 30.49 per cent were above the 95th percentile and 51 per cent were above the 85th percentile in Body Mass Index, or BMI.
Children taking part in the programme undergo medical checks, group nutrition classes, after school physical activities and counselling by doctors, dieticians, PE trainers and counsellors.
The programme also identifies morbidly obese children and appropriate referrals were made to medical professionals for early intervention. One of the most successful achievements of the group was its successful lobbying to introduce a food policy for the school canteens.
The new food policy was implemented in the public schools in September 2010 to ensure that healthy lunches and snacks are offered.
The project is in the third and final year of its pilot study and has been tracking a group of children who were in Year 7 in 2009, when the programme started. As a result of the findings to date, the project has been expanded.
The funding received from the Walkers Foundation will be used to fund the education of pregnant women, young mothers, pre- and primary-school students on eating healthy and being active; the provision of education materials and facilitate the training of parents, teachers, pre-school teachers and caregivers; and biannual screening of children in public schools with expanded medical screening and checkups for students identified as being at risk.
Dr. Sook Yin, co-chair of the project and a director of the Cayman Heart Fund thanked the administrators of Walkers Foundation for their faith and continued support of the programme.
“Thanks to their funding and that of the other sponsors we are able to make a positive impact on the lives of Cayman’s young people and our future leaders. By encouraging our young people to develop healthier lifestyles from an early age, we can have a healthier population overall in the future,” Dr. Yin said.
“The Walkers Foundation is pleased to be able to support the CHTF Health4Youth Programme. The programme performs an incredibly important service by promoting a healthy lifestyle amongst our children and educating the wider community in Cayman about nutrition and the benefits of being active,” said Nancy Lewis of the Walkers Foundation.
For more information on the Children’s Health Task Force and its Health4Youth programme, contact Sue Rajah, project coordinator at [email protected]
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