Skip to Content

RWJF Commits $1 Billion for Healthier Children. How About You?

 

By now you’ve heard that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) will commit an additional $500 million to ensure that kids are able to grow up at a healthy weight. This announcement doubles their 2007 commitment to reversing childhood obesity.

This news undoubtedly impacts each of you, the PreventObesity.net Leaders, so we want to take some time to dig into the implications of this announcement. Over the next 10 years, RWJF’s strategy for ensuring a healthy weight for all kids is centered around five “big bets” that they believe will help all children across the country grow up at a healthy weight. We want to know how your work touches on the goals RWJF has outlined for their work:

  • Ensuring that all children enter kindergarten at a healthy weight.
  • Making a healthy school environment the norm and not the exception across the United States.
  • Making physical activity a part of the everyday experience for children and youth.
  • Making healthy foods and beverages the affordable, available, and desired choice in all neighborhoods and communities.
  • Eliminating the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages among 0-5 year olds.

“What we’ve accomplished over the past decade is something that no single person, and no single organization, could possibly have done alone,” said RWJF President and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey. “If we can do all these things – and I believe we can – we can achieve a society in which all children enjoy a healthy weight, no matter who they are or where they live.” 

Does your work connect to one or all of these priorities? Please reach out to us at [email protected] and we might feature you in an upcoming issue of Inside Track.

We look forward to hearing your stories!

See Flickr Creative Commons license here.