Healthy Hearts Lead to 50 Million Strong Kids!

(This essay was originally published on SHAPE America’s member Exchange [February, 2016] and is reprinted with permission.)

February is Heart Month. Time again for America’s physical educators and health educators to celebrate the value of what we do best: keeping kids healthy.  In our increasingly sedentary and fast-food-focused world, cardiovascular disease remains the nation’s leading cause of death. It’s estimated close to 1 million lives are lost annually, which represents about one of every 2.5 US deaths. None of us remain untouched.

Because many of these deaths are the result of poor lifestyle choices they are often preventable. Inactivity, poor nutrition and tobacco use are chief among the causes, which makes the work of health and physical educators top among the solutions.

Health and physical educators are better prepared and better positioned than anyone to prepare America’s children with the skills, knowledge, habits, and desire to be regularly physically active and make wise lifestyle choices. Public school physical and health educators see almost all of the nation’s kids every week throughout the most influential developmental years of their lives. If anyone’s going to curtail the causes of heart disease it has to be us. And why not?

The evidence is clear: Healthy lifestyles can help prevent heart disease and stroke. Good nutrition, regular physical activity, staying tobacco-free, and maintaining a healthy blood pressure and weight are all part of a healthy lifestyle. And promoting healthy lifestyles is what health and physical education is all about.

Heart Month is a good time for all of us to reflect upon SHAPE America’s recent commitment to getting all of America’s school children physically active and healthy within the next 14 years. “50 Million Strong by 2029” is a national call to action.  How will you respond? Now’s the time for us to recognize that our commitment to getting kids healthy must go beyond our classes.

Jump Rope For Heart and Hoops For Heart

For the health and physical education professions to move forward in the 21^st century and get the respect they deserve, we have to build upon effective classroom instruction and seize all opportunities to give our students physical activity and health-promoting experiences. One of the best ways we can continue to do this is by  organizing Jump Rope For Heart (JRFH) and Hoops For Heart (HFH) school-wide and community-engaging events.

It was in the late 1970s that Milwaukee physical education teacher Jean Barkow organized the first “rope-a-thon” with her local American Heart Association chapter. Discussing the event with NASPE’s public relations leader Fay Biles shortly after, the idea emerged of using rope jumping as a national fundraising event to support research to combat heart disease.

Thirty-six years later, JRFH and HFH programs have grown from a few hundred kids jumping in Jean’s school, to programs in almost 30,000 schools engaging millions of kids. As a joint American Heart Association/SHAPE America fundraiser, Americans have donated more than $700 million for continued research.

If you are one of SHAPE America’s thousands of members who already run JRFH or HFH events — thank you! You are a 50 Million Strong Champion! If you’ve never organized an event or don’t know much about this health-promoting fundraiser, it’s pretty easy. Visit SHAPE America’s JRFH/HFH website for details.

Effective health and physical education enhances the quality of kids’ lives in many ways. February is a great month to both celebrate our impact on heart health and also unite the school community together to raise funds for a cause we can genuinely claim is close to our hearts.