Day Two of the Partnership for a Healthier America Annual Summit Brings More New Partners and Highlights the Kidpreneurs Leading the Next Generation of Food Innovators

SNAP-Ed partners launch and expand FNV campaign in four states, 11 food banks join the PHA food assistance partnership and five food kidpreneurs share their secrets for impacting kids at Day Two of PHA’s 2018 Summit

WASHINGTON, D.C., (May 4, 2018) – Today, 11 food banks join their peers in the Partnership for a Healthier America’s (PHA) food assistance partnership program to increase healthier options in food insecure communities and four PHA partners announced the launch or expansion of the FNV campaign to drive consumption of fruits and vegetables among SNAP recipients in Kansas, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin. These commitments were made at the closing day of the 2018 Innovating a Healthier Future Summit which brought together hundreds of public and private sector leaders to discuss healthy innovation and market disruption to make nutritious food and safe play more accessible to American families. The seventh annual summit is convened by PHA, which works with its honorary chair former First Lady Michelle Obama and the public and private sectors to create solutions to end the childhood obesity crisis.

“We thank all of our partners for their innovative, passionate and collaborative efforts to raise a healthier generation of children in America,” said Nancy E. Roman, President and CEO of Partnership for a Healthier America. “This year, we focused on innovation as a foundation for transformative efforts bringing companies together to work towards a common goal of ensuring healthier options are available and accessible to everyone, and that physical activity is a part of Americans’ daily lives. We are encouraged by the new, returning and expanding partners who continue to embrace the value of voluntary change and know that by working together we can make this goal a reality.”

While PHA is leveraging innovation to drive change alongside some of the largest organizations and businesses in the country, few groups are more innovative than children. As exemplified by the five kidpreneurs who stole the show at the PHA Summit, kids can provide valuable lessons on impacting the next generation. In an insightful panel titled “Kids’ Secrets on Impacting Kids,” PHA convened Tanya Steel, Founder of Cooking Up Big Dreams; Amber Kelley, CEO of Cook with Amber; Braeden Mannering, CEO of Brae’s Brown Bags; Haile Thomas, CEO of The Happy Organization and Braxton Young, Founder of Healthy Little Cooks. Each of these inspiring young entrepreneurs and future leaders have created outstanding businesses and organizations that aim to increase access to healthy nutrition among their peers.

Commitments Made on Day 2

FNV Campaign

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, University of Georgia Extension, University of Wisconsin Extension and North Carolina State Extension have committed to launching or expanding educational advertising efforts using PHA’s FNV campaign as a tool to increase consumption of fruits and vegetables in targeted communities. Through leveraging the tactics of big consumer brands, the FNV campaign uses cheeky headlines to advertise fruits and vegetables. Over 70 percent of audiences who are exposed to the FNV campaign report an increased consumption of fruits and vegetables. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas will be bringing FNV to 67 grocery stores in 33 rural communities statewide and provide a FNV portal that will allow their retail and community partners to leverage FNV assets for community outreach and engagement. Separately, FNV will be used influence attitudes among SNAP-eligible audiences via the following SNAP-Ed implementers:

University of Georgia Extension will be expanding its campaign to include English and Spanish language retail, radio, video and out of home.
University of Wisconsin Extension, after a successful 2017 pilot, is expanding the FNV campaign through retail, digital and out of home advertising to ## urban and rural communities across the state.
In North Carolina, the North Carolina State Extension is bringing the FNV campaign to Cumberland County through targeted digital and point of purchase retail advertising designed to reach millennial parents aged 18 - 35.

Food Assistance Partnership Program

Eleven new food banks joined PHA to provide low-income children and families in need with access to affordable and nutritious food options. The new members include:

Arkansas Food Bank
Central Texas Food Bank
Connecticut Food Bank
Facing Hunger Food Bank
Food Bank of Alaska
Foodlink, Inc.
Foodshare
Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank
San Diego Food Bank
Second Harvest Food Bank of San Mateo/Santa Clara
Three Square Food Bank

PHA’s Food Assistance Partnership Program recognizes, elevates and accelerates the work of food banks and large-scale food pantries committed to addressing hunger and malnutrition by increasing supply and fostering demand of healthier options. These food bank partners commit to evaluating the nutritional quality of at least 50 percent of food in inventory, improving the nutritional quality of food distributed, increasing the amount of nutritious food and beverage distributed, decreasing the amount of food and beverage of minimal nutritional value, incentivize partners to select more nutritious foods and activate distribution environments that encourage the selection of nutritious foods through effective nudges such as packaging, abundance, convenience, display or signage.

MINDBODY

MINDBODY, the leading technology platform for fitness, wellness and beauty services industries, has launched a commitment to create healthier campuses, workplaces and families nationwide. MINDBODY will serve as an official partner to PHA’s Healthier Campus Initiative through programs that will subsidize affordability of fitness classes on college campuses, offer free access to its technology platform and application for more than 50 HCI partners, support campuses in leveraging technology to provide data and evaluation of HCI initiatives and build demand through direct student engagement. To drive healthier workplaces, MINDBODY will provide select businesses with comprehensive toolkits to help create and support corporate wellness programs.

KinderCare

KinderCare, one of the nation’s largest providers of early childhood education, operates a network of more than 1,300 locations and serves 62 million snacks and meals each year to the more than 170,000 children enrolled in its programs. By 2020, KinderCare has committed to a number of changes to their center menus and nutrition programs including removing all grain-based desserts from 100 percent of their centers, incorporating at least one culturally diverse dish each week a vegetarian entrée twice per week on their standard menu, ensure healthy options are offered during all holiday events and celebrations, integrate parent education into the KinderCare Cooking Academy and develop a nutrition training curriculum for Center Directors and Cooks. Additionally, KinderCare will assess current garden offerings at centers, develop a package of new scalable indoor and outdoor gardening options and share best practices for gardening initiatives in early childhood education.

Media interested in covering PHA’s Innovating a Healthier Future Summit should register for credentials by visiting ahealthieramerica.org/summit/press. For more information, please contact news@ahealthieramerica.org.

The Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) is devoted to working with the private sector to ensure the health of our nation’s youth by solving the childhood obesity crisis. In 2010, PHA was created in conjunction with—but independent from— former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! effort. PHA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that is led by some of the nation’s most respected health and childhood obesity experts. PHA brings together public, private and nonprofit leaders to broker meaningful commitments and develop strategies to end childhood obesity. Most important, PHA ensures that commitments made are commitments kept by working with unbiased third parties to monitor and publicly report on the progress our partners are making. For more information about PHA, please visit www.ahealthieramerica.org and follow PHA on Twitter @PHAnews.