Early success for healthy school program

SASKATOON – A program promoting healthy eating and living in local schools, unique to Saskatoon, is showing some early signs of success.

The Health Promoting Schools program lead by the Saskatoon Health Region is focusing on healthy eating, mental health and physical activity with an innovative approach.

“There are other schools doing that, it’s how we’re doing it, so the using and engagement process having nurses as process facilitators within the school, having engagement facilitators and community program builders within the schools as well,” said Saskatoon Health Region’s Tanya Dunn-Pierce.

Twenty Saskatoon schools are involved with many already seeing the benefits in the two years its been running.

“There’s a real feeling of momentum around those healthy choices, whether it’s around reducing bullying or whether it’s around healthy eating or making healthy choices, those are all things that are starting to come from the students themselves,” said Vincent Massey School Principal, Ian Wilson.

The program has now received $1.4 million over four years for the second phase of the project.

“We will be spreading to other schools in Saskatchewan and we’ll be looking through the joint consortium on school health to be able to spread this across Canada should we have positive evaluation results,” said Dunn-Pierce.

Frighteningly 1 in 3 young Canadians are overweight or obese, but it’s not only the children that are getting the healthy living message through schools, they’re taking that knowledge home to their families.

“They’re questioning sometimes or asking for different things in their lunches or they’re talking to them about what they learnt at school in physical education classes or in their other classes around making healthier choices and parents are coming in and saying ‘Hey, I didn’t know that’ or ‘that’s something that I learned from my child in school today’,” said Wilson

The program aims to improve the educational outcomes of students as well as create a healthy school environment.