Category Archives: blueprint

Supporting the Blueprint at Belmont-Cragin Elementary School

Posted on February 10, 2014

Dennis Peters

By Dennis Peters, Guest Blogger

Dennis Peters is a physical education teacher at Belmont-Cragin Elementary School in Chicago.

Belmont-Cragin Elementary School is a PK-8 school located on the northwest side of Chicago.  We have 629 students in grades ranging from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade.  We have worked with CLOCC staff for the past several years in our efforts to meet the HealthierUS Schools Challenge.  (We have achieved Bronze status but are still working toward Gold!) In 2013, CLOCC released a ten-year plan for Chicago called the Blueprint for Accelerating Progress in Childhood Obesity Prevention in Chicago: The Next Decade, and I read the schools recommendations with great interest.  They are in line with the work we are doing here at Belmont-Cragin, so I am happy to share our efforts to support the Blueprint recommendations here at our school.

Our Principal, Stacy Stewart, has always been a champion, recognizing that an improved Physical Education (P.E.) curriculum and getting students more active throughout the school day has academic benefits for the students.  She supported my initiative to adopt a new evidence-based P.E. curriculum that engages students in more moderate to vigorous physical activity than our previous curriculum did. This adoption of a more vigorous P.E. program supports Goal 1 for Schools in the Blueprint: Ensure all schools in Chicago support healthy eating and physical activity for students.

We have gone even further.  Here are just a few of the initiatives we have implemented that support Goal 1 of the Blueprint:

  • Daily classroom physical activity through a program that includes “deskercises” for our K-5 classes
  • A 20-minute walking program before ISAT testing last spring, including the distribution of water bottles to the students and education for the staff on the importance of water and exercise
  • Nutrition education and lunch menus that follow USDA requirements
  • A healthy celebrations policy so school and classroom celebrations are healthier
    for students

I attribute the trend toward health, wellness, and enhanced physical education in our school to strong leadership from the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) Office of Student Health and Wellness. This office works to increase the quality of health services and wellness environments through collaboration, and has been assisting schools in enhance P.E. throughout Chicago.  Part of their focus has been on providing professional development for staff.  Since September 2012, the Physical Education Leadership Team (PELT), convened by CPS, has provided six professional development training days designed to familiarize teachers with enhanced P.E. and the neuroscience research supporting it.

Our health and wellness efforts have also been driven by the introduction of CPS’ 30+20+10 Program at our school.  This includes 30 minutes of daily P.E. for every student, 20 minutes of meaningful recess each day, and 10 minutes of physical activity in the classroom.  I have attended training for this entire program, and Mr. Pallante, one of our 7th grade teachers, is receiving training to be the coordinator of the classroom physical activity – or, as we like to call it, Movement Intervention.  All of these training efforts directly support Blueprint Objective 1-4: Increase capacity of school staff to implement physical activity and nutrition education strategies.

I am optimistic about the focus CPS has taken to enhance Physical Education, especially with the Chicago Board of Education’s passage of a new comprehensive P.E. policy in January of 2014.  However, I know many schools will face difficulties in light of CPS budget constraints.  We know we have to hire additional Physical Education teachers in order to have daily P.E. available to all students, and this could be a challenge.  While our resources may be tight, Belmont-Cragin is a school that has sought opportunities for collaboration and improvement and is seeing the results.

I encourage my students by showing them their improvements, and I make a big deal out of the strides that they make in their health and wellness.  I even showcase their achievements to the administration.  I am proud of my students, fellow staff, and administration at Belmont-Cragin for making student health and wellness a priority.  I am also proud that we are part of a larger citywide initiative to put Chicago children on a healthier path by supporting the CLOCC Blueprint.  I encourage other schools to join us and to share your efforts with CLOCC.  Together, we can accelerate progress in childhood obesity prevention in Chicago through this work!

Parts of this post were adapted from the Illinois Public Health Institute Belmont-Cragin Elementary School case study.  We thank them for permission to use this content.

Reflections on 2013

Posted on December 20, 2013

Adam Becker

by Adam Becker, PhD, MPH, Executive Director

As 2013 comes to a close, I want to take this opportunity to thank you all for another wonderful year of partnership and collaboration. This was a year of great successes and advancements for obesity prevention in Chicago and beyond. We can all be proud of our many accomplishments. While there are far too many to list here, I wanted to share just a few highlights:

•   Our Blueprint for Accelerating Progress in Childhood Obesity Prevention in Chicago: The Next Decade was released in January and was received with great enthusiasm. Over the first three quarters of 2013, CLOCC partner efforts have helped to advance 24 of the 48 objectives in the Blueprint, supporting 13 of the 17 total goals.

•   CLOCC led the development of recommendations for new requirements around nutrition, physical activity and screen time in licensed childcare, which were submitted to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services through the Illinois Early Learning Council. The proposed requirements were based on standards first adopted by the Chicago Board of Health in 2009 with support from CLOCC. We expect the new requirements to go into effect in July 2014.

•   CLOCC partners began working on the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative in 2010 under or federally-funded project, Healthy Places. In 2013, Healthy Places wound down but CLOCC staff continued to support 13 hospitals working toward Baby Friendly Designation. Hospitals across the city are setting policies and adopting practices that help women to breastfeed their babies from the moment of birth. With the great progress these hospitals are making, we anticipate at least one hospital will be designated in early 2014 making it the first Baby Friendly hospital in the City of Chicago.

•   CLOCC’s Community Programs Team trained over 20 community-based organizations on our Neighborhood Walkability Assessment Tool. Working in collaboration with the Active Transportation Alliance, we continue to support these organizations as they advocate for built environment improvements to increase access to safe opportunities for physical activity in their communities.

•   2013 also saw major additions to our collaborative work with Chicago Public Schools. We partnered with CPS’s Office of Student Health and Wellness on Healthy CPS to promote healthy school food environments through mobile vending and to evaluate their new three-year project to enhance physical education, funded by the U.S. Department of Education (Carol White Physical Education Program Grant).

CLOCC’s success is really in its partners – CLOCC is all of us and none of our accomplishments would be possible without the commitment, energy, and passion of the thousands of people who comprise the consortium. These and the many more successes we have accomplished are largely due to all of your efforts across the city (and beyond) to support healthy lifestyles for children and families. We appreciate your hard work and commitment to ensuring that children and their families across our city, state, and nation have the opportunity to live healthy and productive lives for generations to come. We wish you a happy and healthy holiday season and look forward to continued good work ahead in 2014!

CLOCC Released a Blueprint – Now What?

Posted on February 19, 2013

Adam Becker

by Adam Becker, PhD, MPH, Executive Director

On January 8, CLOCC released a Blueprint for Accelerating Progress in Childhood Obesity Prevention in Chicago: The Next Decade.  The blueprint was developed over a year-long period.  During that time, we engaged our local and national leadership and advisors to identify national best-practice and evidence-based approaches.  CLOCC staff identified existing strategies that were being implemented by our many partners or new strategies that would complement the variety of interventions already under way.  We explored the emerging ideas with consortium members through formal and informal conversations and at our September 2012 Quarterly Meeting.  All of this collective wisdom was then synthesized into the document, which we hope will serve as a “one-stop-shop” for obesity prevention recommendations. 

Although the document is intended as a guide for Chicago (because that’s where CLOCC staff and the majority of our partners have the most depth of experience) we are confident that many of the recommendations will be relevant for communities across Illinois and beyond.  The feedback we have received so far is very encouraging, and it is an indication that consortium partners will be using the blueprint in a variety of ways.  But, you might be wondering – “CLOCC released the blueprint…now what?”

CLOCC staff is now hard at work identifying the goals, objectives, and strategies that we will prioritize as an organization.  We plan to share these specific priorities with all of you very soon.  We hope that CLOCC partners will see their own priorities in the blueprint (or use it to identify new ones), and share their progress in accomplishing their goals.  In that spirit, we would like you to take a look at the recommendations at the end of each section of the blueprint and do any or all of the following things:

• Let us know what goals/objectives/strategies/tactics your organization is already doing or planning to do in the near future by sending this information to blueprint@clocc.net.  We will add your plans to the list of current/ongoing efforts that are happening to support the goals and objectives in the blueprint and share our collective progress in advancing the blueprint recommendations.

• Let us know what additional goals/objectives/strategies/tactics your organization would be willing to take on in the future and whether or not you would take them on alone or would be interested in partnering with CLOCC staff and/or other consortium members by sending information and requests to blueprint@clocc.net.  We will work with you to find partners to help you in your efforts. 

• Use the blueprint (the research, the recommendations, or both!) to support your organization’s decision-making and fundraising – and tell us how it helps you  by sending updates to blueprint@clocc.net.  We will collect this information and share it with the consortium so others can get ideas on how they can use the blueprint in their own work. 

• Make your support of the blueprint and its recommendations public by allowing us to list you as an endorsing organization.  Send your endorsement to blueprint@clocc.net, and we will share the list on the CLOCC website and other materials.  We would love to include your organization there!

We hope that the release of the blueprint and the actions we all take can help to mobilize even further the childhood obesity prevention community in Chicago and beyond to achieve the goals and objectives we’ve presented, using the strategies and tactics we’ve identified, so collectively we can advance our work to create healthier children, families, and communities and truly accelerate the progress we’ve made so far.  We appreciate your consideration and look forward to working with you to make these recommendations realities!