Miami Children’s Museum has been selected as a grantee in the Aetna Foundation’s Cultivating Healthy Communities program and was awarded a $100,000 community grant to implement the Miami Children’s Museum Healthy Families program.
The program will provide families from South Florida’s under-served communities with education on important nutrition information and lifestyle choices that can be easily implemented to improve health.
The Cultivating Healthy Communities program awarded more than $2 million in grants to 25 nonprofit organizations in 14 states to advance the Aetna Foundation’s mission to improve health at the local level. Grantees are working on projects that will address social determinants of health such as improving access to healthy foods, promoting biking and physical activity, and reducing exposure to air and water contaminants.
The grantees were chosen based on the strength of their strategies to improve the health of their communities in at least one of five domains: healthy behaviors, community safety, built environment, social/economic factors and environmental exposures.
The series of 10 classes will educate families on how to make healthy and affordable food choices, provide practical skills that enhance a healthy lifestyle such as cooking and menu building and teach simple, accessible exercise and self-care techniques and games such as yoga and dancing.
Families with children enrolled in early learning centers within the nearby surrounding community such as Head Start and Early Head Start will be eligible to participate. The Healthy Family Program classes will be conducted at the museum and will consist of two 60-minute classes at each session: nutrition lessons/healthy meal preparation demonstrations and physical fitness activities.
The project comes at a critical time for the South Florida community as only 36.1 percent of high school students engage in regular physical activity and 27.9 percent of teens are overweight or obese as reported by the 2013 Miami-Dade County Community Health Report Card.
“Thanks to the Aetna Foundation, we are able to bring this program to the children of South Florida, educating and empower families to make healthier choices which will enable these children to make better choices in the future, as adults” said Deborah Spiegelman, CEO/executive director, Miami Children’s Museum.
“The Aetna Foundation is committed to addressing the social determinants of health in order to reduce health disparities,” said Dr. Garth Graham, president of the Aetna Foundation. “By identifying community-specific challenges, and unique ways to combat them, this year’s grantees are a shining example of organizations who strive to make a measurable and positive local health impact. We are honored to contribute towards the great work they are doing in pursuit of health equity.”
This funding addresses the need to improve opportunities for all Americans — regardless of income, education or ethnic background — to take an active role in living healthier lives. For more information on the Cultivating Healthy Communities program visit, visit www.aetnafoundation.org. To learn more about Miami Children’s Museum, visit www.miamichildrensmuseum.org.
