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A multiyear collaboration between community non-profits and Lincoln Public Schools is lowering obesity and improving the physical fitness of Lincoln's school children! Read more.....
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Sugar sweetened beverages are the number one source of excess calories leading to overweight and obesity. Learn more about what beverages you should choose…
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We are participating in Give to Lincoln Day this year! We are asking for your donations to help support projects in the Community Learning Centers. Please consider giving on May 16 to help us support this effort.
An obesity epidemic has taken the country by storm, likely cutting the life expectancy of our children by an average of 5 years and threatening our economy with increased health care costs and lost productivity. In the 1970’s around 5% of children were obese. This has increased to a reported 18.2% in 2010. In Lincoln we have found that 17.2% of our children grades Kindergarten through 8th were obese during the 2010-2011 school year. In an effort to improve the health of the nation’s children, Healthy People 2020 has established a set of goals to reduce obesity prevalence. In Lincoln we have set a community-wide goal to decrease obesity to less than 15% by the year 2015, exceeding the national goal of 15.9% by the year 2020. So far we have shown a slight decrease to 16.8% in during the 2011-2012 school year and hope to see more progress this year.
Physical fitness has a strong correlation to long-term health and may be more important for health than weight itself. We have been working with Lincoln Public Schools to use fitness testing as a means to track the fitness of children in Lincoln. In the 2010-2011 school year, 31.6% of 4-8th grade students could not pass the aerobic fitness test. Our goal, by the year 2015 is to have less than 15% of students failing this test (85% passing). As of last year, we have already improved this to 30.0% and hope to see more progress in improving fitness as well.
