Program Summary

www.healthcorps.org

How to Pay for Stuff

• Making America’s Students & Citizens Agents of Change

Getting Young Americans to Take Charge of Their Health

• HealthCorps® (www.healthcorps.org), a proactive health movement founded by heart surgeon and Emmy Award-winning talk show host Dr. Mehmet Oz, is fighting the obesity and mental resilience crises by empowering American students and their families to become health agents of change for their communities.  A 501 (C) 3, HealthCorps is helping the country reach the tipping point towards wellness now and for the future of our children. 

 

• HealthCorps is transforming the educational paradigm one school at a time by addressing the "Whole Child" and activating a student's mind, body and spirit to create a more vital life for themselves and their community.  We are introducing young people to their true human nature as well as the natural world.

• HealthCorps’ three priorities are:

• Educating the Student Body®:  We empower and educate high school students via real time classroom participation using a peer mentoring model.  What are we teaching?  Balance and Integration through mental strength, nutrition and fitness. We want American youth to use food as pharmacy, feelings and fuel.  We want American children to increase their physical activity.  We want to help restore a critical relationship with Nature among children and teens.

• Like a Peace Corps for Health, HealthCorps is a national health educational/peer mentoring program up and running in 41 high schools in 11 states (AZ, CA, DC, DE, FL, MS, NJ, NY, OH, OR, TX). Since its conception, the program has impacted approximately 60,000 students and an additional 115,000 community members.  By 2015, HealthCorps aspires to have a presence in 400 schools in all 50 states.

 

• The heart of the program: HealthCorps Coordinators are recent college graduates who defer entry into medical school or graduate health programs to participate in public service through a two-year full time assignment at a designated public high school where they conduct approximately ten classes a week and lead after school and community programs. 

• Coordinators empower teens in underserved communities to make simple lifestyle changes to enhance their well-being and resilience and take the message to friends, families and neighbors.  They show students the essence of purpose in life and highlight accountability and choice.  Coordinators’ efforts are guided by the School Health Index (SHI), a key tool developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and compiled by a School Wellness Council comprised of students, faculty and community members.

Our school program includes:

• An experiential curriculum (Nutrition, Fitness and Mental Strength) developed with leading integrative medicine experts and delivered through in-school seminars and after school clubs;

• “Walk Across America” pedometer contests for students and teachers;

• Tools to create educated consumers, including food label, portion and ingredient deciphering;

• Tools to build mental strength and hope, manage stress and problem solve;

• Promoting everyday exercise like walking, yoga and simple strength-building routines;

• Service learning projects to transfer HealthCorps lessons to other students;

• Field trips to organic farms and hospitals to promote Real World Relevance;

• “Teen Battle Chef” farm-to-table nutritional and cooking programs and competitions;

• “Biggest Loser” faculty and school staff fitness competitions;

• Parent’s Nights/Staff Professional Development;

• School-wide health fairs to show students and teachers the resources within their reach;

• Creating a Fit Town™ – the HealthCorps Challenge:  We activate “well-beings” through “Fit Town” that reaches well beyond the school yard to help students, families and organizations experience wellness through community service.  FitTown efforts are guided by key tools developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: the Community Health Index (CHI).

Our community outreach connects students, citizens and organizations with Nature and the “built” environment and empowers them to affect healthy change through such projects and initiatives as:

– Photovoice projects to document health-deficient community settings 

– Creating and maintaining school & community gardens

– Bodega & convenience store makeovers

– Online healthy resource community maps

– Identifying and beautifying outdoor spaces for physical activity

– “Highway to Health” Festivals to highlight community resources.

• HealthCorps partners with schools and school districts.  Coordinators form important ties with public health departments, school systems, community foundations, the business community, city food banks and other non-profit organizations to coalesce efforts.

HealthCorps Advocacy: We advocate for public policy across all levels of our government that put health and physical education back into the core curriculum of the American education system and target policy shifts that move us towards safer environments affecting health (food systems, transportation systems, public space design systems, nature) that encourage and enable people to be more physically active.

 

Both the HealthCorps Chairman Dr. Oz and President Michelle Bouchard have appeared before the United States Senate’s Health Education Labor and Pension Committee in 2009 to discuss wellness policy ideas and HealthCorps’ mission and achievements.

• Obesity in the United States has reached epidemic proportions, with more than 35% of Americans classified as obese and an additional 30% as overweight. Obesity has been a steadily rising trend since the late 1970s.  Recent reports, such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s “F Is for Fat 2010:  How Obesity Policies are Failing in America,” highlight the critical call for action.  (http://healthyamericans.org/reports/obesity2010)  In 2009, twenty-eight states saw a significant increase in obesity and 15 of these states experienced an increase for the second year in a row.  Experts now predict that, without an intervention, the majority of the country will be obese by 2012.

Source: CDC Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.

1999

Obesity Trends* Among U.S. AdultsBRFSS, 1990, 1999, 2008

(* BMI 30, or about 30 lbs. overweight for 5’4” person)

2008

1990

No Data <10% 10%–14% 15%–19% 20%–24% 25%–29% ≥30%

• Alarmingly, the steepest increase is among children and adolescents. Obesity is directly linked to high blood pressure, type 2 Diabetes and atherosclerosis. In turn, these unhealthy conditions are the major cause of heart attacks, strokes and heart failure.  We are now seeing cardiovascular disease in teenagers and the average age of first heart attacks has dropped by over 10 years in the overweight patient. Other morbid conditions linked to obesity are certain cancers and arthritis.

•  Regional, ethnic, and economic divergences characterize the population of obese and overweight people in the U.S.  Hispanics are the most overweight, although obesity is the highest among African Americans.

• Affinity Health Plan Study:  In June, 2009 Dr. Oz presented the results of an independently conducted two-year efficacy study overseen by a methodologist from Cornell University and funded by Affinity Health Plan.  The focus of the study was to quantify the impact of the HealthCorps program on a predominately Hispanic New York City intervention group.  Results of the study found significant benefits of HealthCorps on three dimensions:

1) Sugary soda pop consumption decreases by 0.61 times per week;

2) Participants are 36% more likely to report that they are more physically active;

3) Participants score 10.7% higher on the test of health knowledge. (These estimates assume zero benefit for dropouts; excluding dropouts results in larger effect sizes.)

• Albert Einstein College of Medicine works with HealthCorps in conducting CDC School Health Index exit interviews with principals and is applying for study grants for second generation program evaluation and health-related research activities.

• The May issue of The Journal of Pediatrics published the results of a study on how low impact aerobic exercise and obesity influence standardized test scores among 7th, 8th and 9th graders in California schools.  The conclusion points to a direct correlation between significant regular aerobic exercise/healthy body weight and higher standardized test scores.

• In support of the HealthCorps’ model, a recent Johns Hopkins study (Youfa Wang, associate professor, Bloomberg School's Center for Human Nutrition) concluded that a number of factors, including peers, had a greater influence over the food choices of older kids than did the family or parents (Social Science and Medicine, May 25, 2009). 

• “Physical activity and free play are essential to maintaining a healthy weight and supporting cognitive, physical, social and emotional development and well-being.”   (Stanford School of Medicine, “Building Generation Play,” 2007)

• According to a special report from the New York City Health Department and the New York City Department of Education, standardized test score performance increases consistently with increasing NYC FITNESSGRAM scores across all weight groups.

• Naperville Central High School's Learning Readiness Physical Education Program – the Illinois school made a direct connection between physical exercise and improved reading scores and overall academic performance.  In this light, HealthCorps Advisory Board Member, Dr. John Ratey, Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School wrote Spark, a book that explores the connection between exercise and the brain’s performance and shows how even moderate exercise will supercharge mental circuits to beat stress, sharpen thinking, enhance memory and much more.

Farm2Table Cooking Program

• For the nutrition section of the curriculum, since the start of the 2009-2010 school year, HealthCorps has benefited from a formal relationship with Family Cook Productions to train all Coordinators to carry out their “Teen Battle Chef” farm-to-table nutritional cooking in schools.  The Teen Battle Chef Leadership program also creates culinary arts career internships for HealthCorps students. 

• The projected budget for FY 2011 is approximately $5 million.  Total funding is garnered through a combination of state, city, private foundations, corporate and individual contributions.  Each HealthCorps school program costs approximately $70,000 with over half that amount going towards the Coordinator base salary and fringe benefits.

• HealthCorps’ Founder and Chairman, Dr. Mehmet Oz, is one of the world’s leading cardiac surgeons and Emmy Award-Winning host of the nationally syndicated talk show, The Dr. Oz Show, from Harpo Productions/Sony Television. He served as Health Expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show for five seasons and is also a best-selling author.   He presides over HealthCorps’ Board of Directors and guides the organization and its program. 

• In addition to driving HealthCorps student and community outreach, HealthCorps sponsorship represents an investment in a broad nationwide movement. HealthCorps is strategically partnered with leading private and public initiatives such as the American Diabetes Association, California Walnut Board, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Chiquita Brands International, Delos Living, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Cleveland Clinic, Canyon Ranch Institute, The Harvard Sleep Lab and the National Association for Health Education, among others.

National Headquarters:  191 Seventh Avenue, Suite 2N, New York, NY 10011 212.742.2875

 

• President:  michelle.bouchard@healthcorps.net

• Press:  amy.barone@healthcorps.net

• Education: rob.roberts@healthcorps.net

• Strategic Partnerships:  doug.stroup@healthcorps.net

• Finance: Fpacheco@healthcorps.net

“HEALTHCORPS,” “EDUCATING THE STUDENT BODY,” “FIT TOWN” AND THE HEART/APPLE LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF HEALTHCORPS, INC.