Florida KidCare Holds Contest For Creative Teen Commercials

Florida KidCare is looking for bright, talented middle and high school students who can shoot a 30-second commercial promoting Florida KidCare. (Florida KidCare is Florida’s health-insurance program for uninsured kids.)

The commercial needs to target students ages 12 to 18; in other words, this project is based on peer-to-peer advertising. The 12- to 18-year-olds making the commercials are going to encourage other 12- to 18-year-olds to apply for Florida KidCare.

Student teams, which can have up to three members, can submit film and print entries. There are prizes for students and their schools.

Click here for more contest information.

Tips for a Healthy New Year

Good health is at or near the top of most families’ wish lists for the new year.  The trick is finding new and interesting ways to achieve it.

The Des Moines Register newspaper has a list of 52 useful suggestions, ranging from divvying up snacks into smaller portions and giving boring lunches a healthy boost to making a grocery store trip an adventure or using friends as resources for new, healthy recipes.

Click here to read the complete story.

Wash Your Hands, Your Computer Can Make You Sick

If you need one more reason to wash your hands, this may be it. U.S. health officials say the highly contagious norovirus–stomach flu–can be spread via commonly shared items such as computer keyboards and computer mice. (Common in winter, the virus often is picked up at schools, work and on cruise ships.)

Researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have reported that tests done at a Washington, D.C. elementary school in 2007 revealed some victims picked up the virus from computer equipment. This was the first time they identified keyboards and computer mice as a transmission source for norovirus.

Click here for more information.

High Blood Pressure in Kids Easy to Miss

High blood pressure in kids is often missed, according to a new study by Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and Harvard researchers. They studied more than 14,000 kids under the age of 18 and found that only 26 percent of those with high blood pressure were identified as such. Researchers say part of the problem is that normal blood pressure ranges change according to the child’s age, gender and height. Fewer would go undiagnosed, researchers said, if doctors had access to software programs that calculated blood pressure based on a child’s age, gender and height.

To read more, go to the complete story “High Blood Pressure in Kids Easy to Miss.”

Math, exercise, nutrition linked

SPRINGFIELD – Since participating in the FitMath program at the M. Marcus Kiley Middle School this summer, Stefania Falvo, 10, said she is eating more vegetables and less junk food.

“I have been learning a lot about how to stay fit,” said Stefania, one of about 65 children taking part in the six-week enrichment program. It integrates math with exercise, while providing instruction on good nutrition, active living and relaxation techniques.

In the Kiley gym one morning this month, children in small groups were jotting down figures in notebooks after lifting weights, skipping rope and jumping on trampolines. But instead of competing against one another, they were focused on improving individual performance.

Read the Story at MassLive.com

New state law has students (and teachers) hoppin’

BY HANNAH SAMPSON

The fifth-graders at Colbert Elementary School had just finished their first physical education class of the school year on Wednesday — games of tic-tac-toe in which they were the X’s and O’s.”I’d like to do two hours of P.E. every day,” proclaimed Kayona Bailey, 10, who attends the Hollywood year-round school.

While that wish isn’t likely to come true, elementary schools all over Florida — who already have their days full preparing kids for standardized tests — are now scrambling to meet a new state law that requires 150 minutes of physical education every week.

That means recess will be transformed, with planned activities to keep kids moving, and schools will have to find time in their days to study nutrition or fitness or take part in exercises shown over TVs.

State legislators passed the law in an effort to combat an obesity crisis among today’s youth; statistics show that the percentage of overweight kids between ages 6 and 19 has more than tripled since 1980.

Read the complete article in the Miami Herald

Their mission: Nutrition

USA TODAY’s Nanci Hellmich talks to three women with the same goal: to make sure kids are getting more nutritious foods every day — at school, in restaurants and at home.

Sylvia Dunn calls fruit “nature’s candy” and teaches children to think of it as a tasty dessert.

As the school food services supervisor for St. Tammany Parish Public School System in Covington, La., Dunn has spent 26 years trying to teach students to eat and enjoy nutritious foods. “We are the bedroom of New Orleans, and food is very important in this part of the country,” she says.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy group, has been working for years to get soda, candy, snack cakes and other processed foods out of schools.

A few years ago, MeMe Roth of New York City was so concerned about escalating obesity and the marketing of “fake foods” to children that she founded the advocacy group National Action Against Obesity. She’s a former corporate public relations and marketing executive and the mother of two children, ages 6 and 8.

Read more about Sylvia, Margo and MeMe in the complete article at USAToday.com