March 9, 2009 – Monitoring how implementation of a school wellness policy is going and measuring its impact has just gotten easier. Action for Healthy Kids has launched a convenient monitoring component as a part of its 8-step Wellness Policy Tool. Although most school districts have implemented wellness policies as required by a 2004 Federal mandate, the majority still do not monitor their policy’s implementation – a critical step to ensure policies are improving nutrition and physical activity practices in schools. 

 

“It's one thing to get a wellness policy adopted; it's an entirely higher level to implement and measure all the strategies and activities,” said Jennie McCary, wellness coordinator for Albuquerque Public Schools and president-elect of the New Mexico Dietetic Association. “Because this tool is organized in a linear fashion and fairly comprehensive, including coordinated school health components in addition to nutrition and physical activity, it makes it easy to consider ways to improve our implementation and monitoring plan. I also think the tracker will allow us to keep the wellness policy alive and in front of our school leadership rather than becoming a forgotten mandate.”

 

The new, web-based monitoring component is fully customizable for each school. It offers an implementation ‘desk top’ where users post all provisions of their wellness policy, then note progress, next steps, resources needed, and people responsible for each. A unique scoring system allows schools to evaluate their progress against benchmarks for best practices, as well as their adherence to federal wellness policy mandates. The tracker also provides links to helpful resources based on areas needing improvement.

 

This new component is based on Action for Healthy Kids’ Wellness Policy Fundamentals, which were developed in partnership with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food Research and Action Center, and the United States Department of Agriculture.  Access the Wellness Policy Tracker at http://www.actionforhealthykids.org/policymonitor/index.php.

 

Learn More: If you work with school wellness coordinators or others involved in wellness policy implementation and want to learn more about the new tracker and how to use it, please join us for one of our Wellness Policy Tracker Train-the-trainer webinars. We’ll discuss and walk through the tracker features to better equip you to assist school wellness coordinators with monitoring and assesses their local wellness policies.

 

Date: Monday, March 23^rd

Time: 11 a.m. ET/ 10 a.m. CT

Date: Thursday, March 26^th

Time: 3 p.m. ET/ 2 p.m. CT