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Behavior Change Takes Center Stage in DC
This week, the Forum for Health Behavior Change: Connecting Health Care to Healthy Choices, took place in Washington, D.C. The Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Policy, in partnership with the American Heart Association and the National Business Group on Health, hosted the event to connect health care to healthy choices.
The objective of the forum was to advise health care organizations about how they can support lifestyle changes in clinical and community settings to foster healthier eating and more physical activity. Featured speakers included Raymond Baxter, Senior Vice President, Community Benefit, Research and Health Policy at Kaiser Permanente; BJ Fogg, PhD, Founder & Director, Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University and Howard Koh, MD, MPH, Assistant Secretary for Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. These speakers addressed the topic of behavior change and provided expert insight into how to prioritize limited resources for the greatest impact on healthy lifestyles, and to combat the obesity epidemic.
In this video, CDC Director Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH, talks about the role of health behavior change in the Million Hearts Campaign.
Stay tuned for more on the Forum, including interviews with presenters.
Fighting Childhood Obesity with the Inspiring Premiere of the Weight of the Nation for Kids
Tonight, the documentary, The Weight of the Nation for Kids, premieres on HBO. The three-part series focuses on young people taking the initiative to fight obesity by effecting real change in their school and community environments.
The three films are:
- The Great Cafeteria Takeover, which follows a group of children in New Orleans that set out to make a difference in their community during the post-Katrina rebuilding period, eventually succeeding in changing their school lunch menus to include healthier options.
- Kabreeya’s Salad Days, the story of 17-year-old Kabreeya Lewis, whose fierce persistence allowed her to achieve her goal of having a salad bar in her high school cafeteria in North Carolina.
- Quiz Ed!, a documentary-style quiz show that polls young people, ranging from 10 to 18 years of age, using riddles about the food and activity factors that are contributing to the obesity epidemic.
Kaiser Permanente is also addressing the issue of obesity through the recently launched Thriving Schools — a comprehensive, national effort for K-12 students, their parents and families as well as teachers and staff, focused on creating a culture of health in schools. These efforts combined are part of an ongoing commitment to improve school health through healthy food options and regular physical activity.
The original Weight of the Nation series of documentaries first aired on HBO (and were available on the documentary’s official website) in 2012, and was part of a major public awareness campaign aimed at addressing the obesity epidemic in the United States. More on The Weight of the Nation series is available here, and on the official website.
The Center for Total Health has a new, interactive, touch-screen exhibit focused on healthy schools and healthy workplaces, and much of its content addresses the growing challenge of obesity in the United States. If you are in the Washington, D.C. area, we invite you to stop by and experience it — and the rest of the center’s exhibits — first hand. You can find information about visiting the center here.
TEDMED: We Break for Recess!
With the help of the good folks at Playworks, everyone watching the TEDMED live stream from the Center for Total Health today took a few minutes to act like kids and add play to our day. In children, play can help develop adaptability, creativity, and connecting with people — all valuable skills when it comes to innovative thinking. Today, recess was just what the doctor ordered.
Keep following our antics on Twitter at @kptotalhealth. And join the conversation via hash tags #TEDMED and #kpcth.
TEDMED at CTH: Time for a Stretch Break
Let the TEDMED activities commence!
TEDMED begins this week in Washington, D.C. For those attending activities at the Kennedy Center, registration is underway. Tonight, an opening reception in “The Hive” — a 30,000-square-foot space dedicated to exploring innovation around health and medicine (and the main social destination for TEDMED delegates) — officially kicks off the conference.
In addition to the well-known TED “talks” on a variety of health-related topics, the conference is sponsoring several activities promoting the health of its participants. Delegates are encouraged to participate in runs, yoga and meditation, as well as morning “Walk ‘n Talks” of more than 1,000 steps from TEDMED hotels to the Kennedy Center.
As a sponsor of TEDMED 2013, Kaiser Permanente has a booth in The Hive that has been created around a single word: THRIVE. Using a mixture of innovative technology (from KP’s Garfield Center and the Center for Total Health), the interactive showcase presents a model for the future of health care and sick care. The booth experience demonstrates how we thrive in healing environments, in living environments and beyond. If you are at TEDMED, please stop by.
The Center for Total Health will live stream TEDMED sessions from Wednesday morning through Friday mid-day, with discussions following each session facilitated by the Innovation Learning Network. Thursday will feature a lunchtime recess break led by Playworks and an evening reception for delegates spotlighting start-up innovators.
We’ll be covering all the Center for Total Health activities here on the blog all week, so stay tuned for more. And if you want to follow — or join — the conversation on Twitter, you can follow hash tags #TEDMED and #kpcth all week.
Bringing Healthier, More Nutritious Options to Food Banks
Our friends at the Kaiser Permanente News Center have a nice write-up today about the initiative called Healthy Options, Healthy Meals™ that focuses on meeting the nutritional needs of people who rely on emergency food assistance programs — such as food banks — for their meals.
MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, in partnership with the Center for Weight and Health at UC Berkeley, and Kaiser Permanente, has helped numerous food banks throughout the United States improve the quality and nutrition of their food by optimizing procurement and supply policies and practices. A few of the successes the program has experienced, along with other learnings, are highlighted in the video below.
More on the work of the Healthy Options, Healthy Meals initiative can be found here.
Committed to Advancing Public Health
In honor of National Public Health Week, our friends over at the Kaiser Permanente News Center have put together a list of 10 ways the health organization demonstrates its commitment to public health. The list includes the Every Body Walk! public awareness campaign, the Educational Theatre Program (celebrating its 25th year bringing important health information and conversations into schools), Safety Net grants and fellowships, and its efforts to fight this country’s obesity epidemic.
It is actually part of Kaiser Permanente’s mission to help improve the health of the communities it serves. For more on KP’s contributions in the public health space, visit here.
This blog is intended to be a place for robust dialogue on health-related issues. Statements on this site do not necessarily represent the views or policies of Kaiser Permanente. All content is copyrighted.
Walk On: It’s National Walking Day
What better way to support National Walking Day than to take action? We have two ways for you to do that that have the potential to make a difference:
For more information and inspiration, visit the Every Body Walk! website.
Tags: Every Body Walk!, public comment, public health campaign, surgeon general, Walking
Posted in Healthy Communities, Healthy Living, Obesity Prevention & Treatment, Video, Walking | Add a Comment