We are proud to announce our three-year commitment to expand healthier options on campus through its collaboration with Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) – a leading organization working with the private sector to ensure that all children and young adults have the opportunity to live healthy, active lives.
Marymount is one of more than 70 institutions of higher learning to implement PHA’s rigorous Healthier Campus Initiative (HCI) guidelines designed to create a culture shift towards greater health and wellness among its campus community of students, staff, and faculty. Cumulatively, HCI partners serve more than 1 million undergraduate students. Thirty-two percent of those students receive U.S. Federal Pell Grants, which are awarded to undergraduate students who display exceptional financial need.
“One of our first priorities as a new office was to create an environment at Marymount to support our community health and wellness needs. We are so excited to lead the efforts with the Healthier Campus Initiative and to watch our campus transform,” said Karina Guzman, the Director of Wellness, Intervention, and Prevention.
“We congratulate Marymount University’s commitment to supporting students and their wider campus community to develop healthy habits that will last a lifetime,” said PHA President and CEO, Nancy E. Roman. “Their leadership is an important step forward towards realizing Partnership for a Healthier America’s goal that all young people grow up free from obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other conditions associated with excess weight.””
As part of the Healthier Campus Initiative commitment, we will work collaboratively with PHA to build upon existing campus wellness efforts to encourage and support greater physical activity and healthier eating habits. Every Healthier Campus Initiative partner commits to meeting 23 of 41 PHA guidelines within three years. Of the 23 commitment elements implemented at Marymount, a few include:
- Providing marked walking routes on campus, one of which will be at least 2 miles in length.
- Offer a comparable plant-based food option at every platform that is serving meat.
- Implementing a program that identifies students who may be food insecure and provide options on campus.
PHA’s guidelines were developed in collaboration with some of the nation’s leading nutrition,
physical activity and campus wellness experts. As with all PHA partners, each of the commitment elements will be verified by an independent third party and publicly reported in PHA’s annual progress report.
To learn more about PHA’s participating colleges and universities, visit ahealthieramerica.org/campuses.
The Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) The Partnership for a Healthier America
(PHA) is devoted to working with the private sector to ensure the health of our nation’s
youth by solving the childhood obesity crisis. In 2010, PHA was created in conjunction with—
but independent from former First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! effort. PHA is a
nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that is led by some of the nation’s most respected
health and childhood obesity experts. PHA brings together public, private and nonprofit
leaders to broker meaningful commitments and develop strategies to end childhood obesity.
Most important, PHA ensures that commitments made are commitments kept by working
with unbiased third parties to monitor and publicly report on the progress our partners are
making. For more information about PHA, please visit www.ahealthieramerica.org and
follow PHA on Twitter @PHAnews
