Alliance for a Healthier Generation's Go Healthy Month Inspires Kids to Take a Stand Against Childhood Obesity
(IOWA) Sept. 1, 2009 - The Alliance for a Healthier Generation, founded by the American Heart Association and the William J. Clinton Foundation, is empowering youth to join the fight against childhood obesity and to celebrate September's Go Healthy Month.
Focusing efforts on preventing childhood obesity and creating healthier lifestyles for all children, the Alliance has designated the month of September as Go Healthy Month. Our empowerME movement - more than one million strong - will reach out this month to expand and inspire even more tweens and teens to eat better, move more and wipe out America's obesity epidemic. Tweens and teens are asked to join the empowerME movement and become leaders and advocates for healthy eating and physical activity in their communities. Through empowerME, healthy lifestyles become "cool" for tweens and teens.
"America's kids are facing unprecedented rates of obesity. By joining together to fight this epidemic, they are inspiring each other to live healthier," said Ginny Ehrlich, executive director of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. "Through Go Healthy Month and the empowerME Movement we hope to empower kids to make better choices now, to ensure an impact on their health and quality of life in the future."
"Go Healthy Month is the perfect time for us kids to make a commitment to be healthy," said David Sanchez, 17, Racine, Wisc., a member of the empowerME Movement's Youth Advisory Board. "By attending a Go Healthy Month event, joining the empowerME Movement and sharing our stories, we can motivate each other to make sure our generation will live longer, healthier lives."
To teach kids the basics of healthy eating and living active lifestyles, the Alliance also created a FREE, 8-session healthy living course - empowerME4Life. The course is age-appropriate, culturally relevant, targeted to kids ages 8-12; and can be facilitated by older youth or adult allies. When young people learn to make small changes in what they eat and how active they are, they can make a big difference in their health over time.
Youth are encouraged to visit www.empowerme2b.org to learn more about joining the empowerME Movement and the FREE EmowerME4Life program.
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