Foundation Underscores the Merits of Healthy Food Choices
July 28th, 2010
by
Lee-Lee Prina
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With First Lady Michelle Obama’s interest in fresh produce from the garden, we are reminded of how good it is, especially this time of year, to indulge in fresh fruits and vegetables. Check out this four-color magazine recently released by a foundation in Pittsburgh.
The Heinz Endowments recently released the first “food issue” of its h magazine. (Yes, it is called simply “h.”) This Spring 2010 issue begins with an introduction by Teresa Heinz, chairman of the endowments, whose late husband was Republican Sen. John Heinz of Pennsylvania—he was tragically killed in a plane crash in 1991. (She is now married to Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.) Teresa Heinz comments, “Nowhere in our consumer-purchasing decisions are the stakes higher for our long-term health than in the choices we make about food.” This issue of h is “devoted to food as it relates to environmental issues and our health,” she explains.
According to the magazine, Heinz told attendees at the Women’s Health and the Environment 2010 conference (held in April and sponsored by the Heinz Endowments) about her “trials and tribulations of the past year with breast cancer and a series of other health calamities.” She advises readers, “We need to focus on the things we can control—the things that stand to make a real difference to our health.” And what we decide to eat and drink for ourselves and for our loved ones “is one of those areas.”
An article in h titled “Food for Thought,” by Christine O’Toole, says that “despite a national obsession with the ideal of eating and exercising for lifetime health, bad food and couch-potato lifestyles still rule.” The author, in previewing the issue, says that the stories are on “strategies to encourage farmers to produce more fresh foods for their local communities; foods that promote good health and help fight disease; national and local trends to promote consuming more nutritious food; and food-equity programs that provide low-income communities with access to healthy eating options.” Those communities,” she later observes, often have “few good supermarkets.”
The magazine also mentions a Carnegie Mellon University project that aimed to develop proposals for reducing obesity across Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. One recommendation of the team that worked on the project was to tax soft drinks. The team included students and professors. Read more about this project here. Questions? Call 412-268-2670.
Part of a Heinz grant was used to plant organic fruits and vegetables in three indoor courtyards of Magee-Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh. The produce is used in healthy foods prepared for hospital staff and patients, the issue says. Also, the gardens are starting to be used for educating patients, staff, nursing students, and medical students about food.
The magazine concludes with some highlights of the Women’s Health and Environment 2010 conference, which, h said, attracted a “capacity crowd” to hear speakers including Regina Benjamin, U.S. Surgeon General.
The Heinz Endowments’ grant making includes programs in Environment and and in Children, Youth, and Families. Grant seekers: Please note that the Heinz Endowments “concentrates its efforts and resources in Southwestern Pennsylvania,” according to its Web site.
Just a few examples of other foundations doing related work:
The Aetna Foundation has a program area on obesity. Read the foundation’s funding guidelines here. According to an April 2010 e-alert, the foundation has awarded nearly $6 million to support “efforts to combat childhood obesity.”
Read about the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF’s) program area on childhood obesity. The section of its Web site on obesity includes May 2010 videos, in English and Spanish, with Eduardo Sanchez, vice president and chief medical officer of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, discussing “Childhood Obesity and Latinos.”
Read about the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s food strategy within its Healthy Kids funding area. Kellogg describes the locales in which it funds here.
The Paso del Norte Health Foundation, which funds in the El Paso, Texas, area, (including Ciudad Juárez, Mexico) awarded a three-year grant of more than $2.5 million to the El Paso Independent School District for implementation of “Get HIP (Health Initiative Program) Now.” The school system says that more than 43,000 kids in kindergarten through eighth grade, from seventy-four schools, “will benefit from this integrated approach to school health and childhood obesity prevention.”
Related resource:
Health Affairs, March 2010 issue with the theme of “Child Obesity: the Way Forward.” The issue was funded by the RWJF.
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