To Improve School Nutrition, Involve Teachers and Parents
Junk-food ‘interventions’ decreased consumption of unhealthy foods and beverages by 30 percent.
To improve school nutrition and get children to eat healthier, involve parents, teachers and school administrators, new research finds.
Researchers from Kaiser Permanente Southern California looked at 400 students at eight elementary and middle schools who took part in a three-year study that examined the use of a public-health approach to improve nutrition.
During the study, the researchers worked with teachers and administrators at certain schools to improve nutrition practices. For example, they replaced food and beverage classroom rewards with non-food prizes and implemented healthy catering at school events and classroom celebrations.
For fund-raising events, they served healthy foods and beverages, awarded non-food prizes and had games such as a “prize walk” instead of a “cake walk.” The researchers noted that schools actually made more money through healthy events such as jog-a-thons than carnivals with
5 Tips for Teaching Teens About Money - Mark Hansen
As children blossom into young men and women, most insist on planning and running their own lives. Parents worry about all the basic essentials for their kids’ independent living, like housing, eating properly, staying warm, being careful at night and more. But most parents forget to teach their youngsters one of the most important lessons of all – financial responsibility. The resulting turmoil can spell disaster for a child’s future.Consider this: The average young adult amasses $45,000 in debt by the time they turn 29, according to a recent PNC Bank report.
“This generation of 20-somethings was raised during an economically-thriving period,” says financial expert Mark Hansen, author of Success 101 for Teens(www.success101forteens.com). “Undisciplined spending habits, student and
Report: Untreated Mental Illness Lowers Life Expectancy by 25 Years in Latinos
Latinos living in California suffer great disparities in the services they receive for the prevention and treatment of mental illnesses, a new report said.Community-Defined Solutions for Latino Mental Health Care Disparities, prepared by the Center for Reducing Health Disparities at the University of California, Davis, identified depression, anxiety disorders, and alcohol and drug abuse as the commonest problems in the Hispanic community.
“Untreated mental illnesses among Latinos lower their life expectancy by about 25 years,” the principal author of the study, Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, director of the UC Davis Center for Reducing Health Disparities and director of the Community Engagement program at the UC Davis Clinical and Translational Science Center, told Efe.
The expert said that, though some mental health problems become apparent at younger ages than other chronic