Because of the health implications of childhood obesity, children today have a shorter life expectancy than their parents for the first time in 100 years. A startling number of American children are obese or at risk of becoming so, while locally more than one-third of Arkansas’s children are overweight or at risk. Unless they begin eating less and exercising more, our children will continue to face the threat of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, asthma and other significant health problems.
To help the children of Northwest Arkansas ward off obesity and related complications, the Springdale-based Care Foundation and Northwest Arkansas Community Foundation are working together to implement the national program PE4Life in schools across our region. “The Care Foundation has been interested in the prevention of chronic disease, and we have focused on children,” says Jan Lightner, program officer of the foundation. “PE4Life is an innovative program that really provides daily opportunities for children to get up and move.”
Based in Kansas City, Mo., PE4Life is a nonprofit organization dedicated to wellness through physical activity. Its mission is not only to develop a country full of active, healthy children by increasing their access to quality physical education, but also to serve as an advocate and a resource to promote physically active lifestyles. “We are all about healthy, active children,” says Brenda VanLengen, vice president of operations for PE4Life. “We focus on rallying support about the importance of communities acting together to get kids healthy.”
Through its implementation program, PE4Life has trained more than 189 teams of nearly 1,500 educators, administrators and community leaders from 35 states – reaching more than 2,309 schools and 1.7 million children since 2001. PE4Life considers the specific needs of schools to give them quality, sustainable physical education programs. Its training services include assessment and evaluation of schools’ needs, consultation on implementation of the program, in addition to ongoing support services. “PE4Life is a solution, not a burden,” Lightner says. “It doesn’t take much for schools to keep the program up after a year.”
PE4Life’s innovative and unconventional approach to physical fitness dramatically transforms the way schools approach physical education. Unlike traditional physical education curriculum, PE4Life utilizes a variety of sports and fitness activities such as mountain biking, rock wall climbing, yoga and even raking leaves for the elderly. PE4Life also assesses progress based on whether students maintain their target heart rates, rather than on students’ knowledge of rules or teachers’ perception of involvement. Likewise, it encourages small group games tailored to students’ interests to ensure active participation, while focusing on all children—not just the athletically inclined—by emphasizing personal achievement and growth rather than competition. As Lightner points out, even the visually impaired can participate.
The positive impact of PE4Life’s approach extends beyond simply boosting physical fitness, however. Studies show that PE4Life students also perform better academically and have fewer disciplinary incidents. Kim Mason, recently retired from 28 years as a physical education teacher in the Rogers School District, was the driving force behind bringing PE4Life to Kirksey Middle School in Rogers four years ago. Mason says that the program is having a similar, positive impact on students in Northwest Arkansas.
Since implementing PE4Life, Kirksey has grown its program into one of just six PE4Life “academies” nationwide designed to teach other administrators how to implement the program in their own schools. Now director of the Kirksey PE4Life academy, Mason is working full time to not only transform physical education, but also teach children to lead healthy lives, both at school and at home. As part of PE4Life’s mission to garner community support, Mason even collaborates with the Rogers Activity Center to promote out-of-school activities for her students. “We want to help kids make positive, healthy choices,” Masons says. “As they start seeing success, they will be motivated to continue being healthy.”
Ultimately, PE4Life’s achievements at Kirksey encouraged the Care Foundation to fund the program in other schools across the region, and additional support from the Northwest Arkansas Community Foundation further underscores Northwest Arkansas’s community-minded citizenry. “It is exciting that the more the community learns about PE4Life, the more they want to support it,” Lightner says.
PE4Life is being embraced by many other Northwest Arkansas schools, including Hellstern, Helen Tyson and J.O. Kelly Middle Schools in Springdale; Old High Middle School in Bentonville; and Siloam Springs Middle School. And because of the efforts and support of the NWA community, PE4Life is set to continue paving the way to a healthier future for our young citizens. Says VanLengen, “Northwest Arkansas is leading the country and setting the tone for how the entire community can embrace the PE4Life concept.”
For more information, visit www.PE4Life.org or www.ccfound.org.
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