Supporting Schools and Early Childhood Centres Ensuring Children are active, healthy and ready to learn The aim of the Let's Beat Diabetes Programme is to work alongside education and health providers to develop programmes that encourage physical activity and healthy food environments in education settings. Activity levels in Counties Manukau children are 15% below the national average. It is often schools that service the most at-risk communities which have the least resources to support good nutrition and physical activity. Anecdotal evidence states that schools have been placing less emphasis on physical activity over the past decade in favour of spending extra time on academic subjects. However, emerging international evidence shows that improved nutrition and physical activity levels in schools support improved behavioural and academic outcomes (and also financial outcomes) for schools. Schools need to understand that by becoming health promoting environments they are improving their children’s potential for learning success. The nutrition and physical activity environments in schools are characterized by multiple providers and programmes with no overall co-ordination or direction. Schools are confused and fatigued due to external providers raising expectations which cannot be met with internal school resources. During 2005/2006, Let’s Beat Diabetes (LBD) will focus on: enhancing the coordination of existing health promotion providers to minimise schools’ confusion and fatigue establishing a leadership hub to oversee strategy development enhancing and supporting the AIMHI/NEW pilot in selected high risk secondary schools trialling and rolling out the ‘healthy canteen’ business model, and supporting schools to improve ‘drinks’ environment in and around schools developing new funding streams to support schools to make sustainable changes, and supporting Kohanga Reo, Kura Kaupapa and Pacific early childhood centres (ECEs) to enhance or develop and implement nutrition and physical activity policy and programmes.
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