During this year’s NIRSA Annual Conference, the Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) and ChildObesity180, based at Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition, invite you to join us for breakfast at 7:00am on Monday, February 18 in Room 204 of the Convention Center to learn more about Healthier Campus Initiative (HCI) and our new evaluation examining HCI’s guidelines and student health behaviors.

Healthier Campus Initiative

PHA created HCI in 2014, and to date, 72 campuses have joined, reaching nearly 1.6 millions students, faculty, and staff. Participating campuses adopt at least 23 of 41 evidence-based guidelines that help promote physical activity, healthy eating, and general wellbeing on campus. Nineteen of the 41 guidelines are specific to physical activity, spanning pedestrian and bike-friendly accommodation policies, how-to fitness classes, personal trainers, walking trails, bike paths, outdoor fitness systems, and more.

Our 72 campuses have access to a range of support resources to help them implement guidelines, including monthly webinars, best practice guides, healthy campus week activities, and private sector sponsorships. MINDBODY is a PHA partner that is offering free access to its technology platform and application for HCI partners. They also support data and evaluation of HCI initiatives and build demand through direct on-campus activations. Also, HCI has received in-kind donations from other private sector PHA partners like Target and the North Face. These are just a few examples of the tremendous networking opportunities HCI campuses have with other PHA private sector partners.

Evaluation of Healthier Campus Initiative

PHA is partnering with ChildObesity180, housed in one of the world’s leading schools of nutrition at Tufts University, to leverage its expertise in research, evaluation, and the design of national-scale, evidence-based interventions. Beginning in 2018, ChildObesity180 started work with PHA to conduct an evaluation of HCI guidelines. That multifaceted research effort is exploring campuses’ experience with the initiative and its effectiveness in advancing student health behaviors and outcomes. There is no cost to participating schools and all receive a summary data report about student health behaviors on campus.

We invite all NIRSA members to join us to learn more about HCI and find out how you can participate in HCI and/or the HCI evaluation—there’s still time to participate this spring!

 

  • For more information, please contact NIRSA Director of Advocacy & Strategic Partnerships Erin O’Sullivan.

The Partnership for a Healthier America is devoted to working with the private sector to ensure the health of our nation’s youth by solving the childhood obesity crisis. We bring together public, private and nonprofit leaders to broker meaningful commitments and develop strategies to end childhood obesity. Most importantly, we ensure that commitments made are commitments kept by working with unbiased, third parties to monitor and publicly report on the progress our partners are making to show everyone what can be achieved when we all work together.