Campaign by health advocates to improve school health

Colin

Late posting #2

Topic: Education

Publication:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/09/us-government-urged-to-fi_n_1504319.html?ref=education

This article is about a campaign by a coalition of health-advocacy groups to improve health in schools. They urged the US government on May 9^th to increase the number of resources devoted to school health. The coalition, including the National Education Association and the American Cancer Society numbered more than 70 groups. Some claims made included that healthy children perform better in school than unhealthy children. They also want more health-oriented schools to combat the rising child-obesity epidemic. In the proposal, they want reimbursement by Medicaid to be made more convenient for schools. It also wants at least one hour of physical activity to be mandatory every day. In addition, it seeks to ban sugary beverages in favor of water. A part of the difficulty in making school-health progress is efforts are normally fragmented across a number of different branches of government. This campaign is an effort to bypass that.