News November 28, 2011

Walgreens, Walmart and The Mushroom Council Join Inaugural PHA Summit as Key Sponsors

WASHINGTON, DC (November 28, 2011) – The Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) today announced that Walgreens, Walmart and the Mushroom Council have joined PHA’s inaugural Building a Healthier Future Summit as key sponsors. PHA works with the private sector to ensure the health of our nation’s youth by solving the childhood obesity crisis. The Summit will bring together philanthropic, government and private sector leaders to focus on where each can work together, ultimately leading to a coordinated national agenda focused on ending childhood obesity.

“We are proud to partner with PHA to help identify new solutions to the obesity epidemic affecting so many American children,” said Bart Minor, president of the Mushroom Council. “Mushrooms can help in a unique way because they are compatible with meats in texture and flavor and therefore more seamlessly reduce calories and add a vegetable serving in kid favorites like spaghetti, tacos, and sloppy Joes. Replacing some of the higher-calorie items in a recipe with finely diced mushrooms cuts calories but also keeps kids, and moms, happy. A simple swap can make a difference.”

“We’re delighted that Walgreens, Walmart and the Mushroom Council are supporting the Building a Healthier Future Summit,” said PHA CEO Lawrence A. Soler. “Their joint commitments to help make the healthy choice the easy choice for all Americans has been well-documented, from building and expanding stores in areas that lack access to helping people realize that eating healthier can mean simple and inexpensive menu substitutions. But these organizations have stepped up again to help us make the Building a Healthier Future Summit a success; we can’t thank them enough.”

The Building a Healthier Future summit, which takes place November 29 to 30 at the Omni Shoreham in Washington, D.C., brings leaders together to find new opportunities and new solutions to make the healthy choice the easy choice. The full agenda is available at www.ahealthieramerica.org/summit.

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 – 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.