Kids For Health Moves Into National Arena

Program to develop content for Web-based preventive medicine concept

Orion General, 2, and Alissa Creech, 7, eat a Christmas dinner Friday at the Bentonville Church of Christ during the annual B&B Fund Drive in Bentonville.
CHRISTMAS DINNER
Orion General, 2, and Alissa Creech, 7, eat a Christmas dinner Friday at the Bentonville Church of Christ during the annual B&B Fund Drive in Bentonville. CHRISTMAS DINNER

— A health education program that started 15 years ago in Washington County schools is moving into a national arena to help children around the world learn healthy habits for life.

Kids for Health started as a program administered by Washington Regional Medical Center. Through the program, a team of health educators, some dressed in funny costumes, visited elementary schools in the county to teach healthy living, like brushing teeth after eating or choosing an apple over a handful of cookies for an after-school snack.

There were games and videos and songs and fun.

After several years, Kids for Health was separated from the hospital’s oversight and became a nonprofit agency on its own. Several years ago, the agency received a grant from the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation to package the lessons in grade-appropriate videos. Arkansas then approved the curriculum to meet Arkansas standards for elementary health education, making the Kids for Health curriculum available for purchase by school districts across the state.

Now, elements of the curriculum will be incorporated into an international preventive health program available to children of parents who have the preventive health program as part of their benefit package.

Washington Regional Medical Center is one of the first employers in Arkansas to offer a health management program based on clinical preventive medicine, according to a statement from the hospital.

The program, available through U.S. Preventive Medicine, will be offered to employees as part of their benefits package starting in January, said Steve Percival, the hospital’s human resources director and executive director of Kids for Health.

Chris Fey, a Texas businessman who founded U.S. Preventive Medicine, said he found Kids for Health several years ago during a random search of the Internet. He purchased the curriculum and, after several conversations with Percival, Kids for Health personnel and hospital officials, began to develop a Web-based prevention program for children through a partnership agreement with Kids for Health.

“We’re trying to get kids at an early age and be a resource for moms,” Fey said.

The Kids for Health role in the preventive medicine program is to serve as the content experts and developers for the new Prevention Plan for Kids, Percival said.

“The scope and exposure is unlimited,” Percival said.

U.S. Preventive Medicine recently signed up Nevada state employees and is rolling out the program in London this month.

Percival said 1,750 Washington Regional employees are eligible for benefits and, of those, 1,650 employees have health insurance benefits provided by the hospital. The hospital employs more than 2,000 people.

The children’s component of the preventive health program should be ready to release in the first half of 2010, Fey said.

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