Healthy Role-Modeling
By Matilda Raffa Cuomo & Susan J. Moesker

Mentoring USA is expanding through powerful partnerships that enhance our ability to help our children thrive. This past year, Mentoring USA has partnered with the Strang Cancer Prevention Center to offer children access to improved lifestyles. With the leadership of Dr. Michael P. Osborne, president of the Strang Cancer Prevention Center, the Child Health Initiative was formed to promote the importance of helping young children to understand and adopt healthy habits, such as eating nutritiously and getting adequate exercise.

As Chair of the Child Health Initiative Advisory Board, I know that we are fortunate to have a dynamic Executive Director, B.J. Carter, along with 16 Board Members, who are outstanding leaders and advocates for children’s health. The program, “Healthy Children, Healthy Futures,” is being funded by Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in an attempt to address the nation’s child obesity crisis. According to recently published statistics from the CDC (National Center for Disease Control), the number of overweight children and teens has doubled over the past 20 years. This, in turn, leads to higher incidences of serious and life-threatening diseases such as diabetes and cancer.

The challenge is how to encourage children to become stakeholders in nutrition and physical activity education for themselves, their peers, families and communities. Beginning in September 2002, children in after school programs in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York will spend 12 weeks in small groups facilitated by adult mentors, learning about healthy lifestyle choices. They will then utilize their newfound knowledge to create media messages to share with their peers about the importance of what you eat and how much you exercise.

Mentoring USA staff is involved in the development and promotion of nutrition and fitness messages by and for kids in the three pilot cities, and we are currently developing the training component of this program. It is Mentoring USA’s goal to be sure that mentors are successful in conveying the information to the young people in an age-appropriate, upbeat and compelling manner. It is not enough for mentors to simply “talk the talk” as far as health is concerned; children will be persuaded, rather, by the behaviors their mentors model for them. Mentors will be selected from the talented staffs of Inner City Games, L.A’s Best After School Enrichment Program, and Boys and Girls Clubs of America.

Recently, while attending a wonderful luncheon at the French Culinary Institute on the occasion of the opening of a new mentoring program, I met the nationally-renowned chef from San Francisco, Alice Waters. She shared with me a delightfully simple concept that she has championed: encouraging children to undertake gardening projects, such as growing their own vegetables. She has found that children derive great satisfaction and enjoyment from learning to appreciate the nutritional value, color, taste, and beauty of food that they grow themselves. They are also exposed to a wider variety of produce than may ordinarily be available on their home or school menus. In the future, Mentoring USA will look to embrace pioneering programs such as this.

The most widely-studied, and perhaps the most powerful factors in the school environment that influence student activity and nutrition behaviors are the schools’ programs in health education, physical education, and food service. We at Mentoring USA believe that the fundamental knowledge about choice in all of these areas will afford children a healthy lifestyle that will endure throughout their entire lives, and impact their families as well.#

Matilda Cuomo is the former first lady of NY and founder and chairperson of Mentoring USA.

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