Generations with Promise Grant
Generation With Promise (GWP) is in its second year of the three year implementation cycle. GWP is a partnership between the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH), the Michigan Fitness Foundation, the Michigan Department of Education, Wayne State University, and the University of Michigan. This partnership links Governor Jennifer Granholm’s Cities of Promise with MDCH’s Michigan Steps Up in an effort to empower middle school youth in underserved communities across Michigan to utilize schools as vehicles for youth health improvement in the areas of policy, environmental, and behavior change. The project is generously funded through a $5,000,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and is spearheaded by Dr. Kimberlydawn Wisdom, Michigan’s Surgeon General.
KHS faculty Dr. Nate McCaughtry, Dr. Jeff Martin, and doctoral student Sara Flory have been in a leadership capacity with GWP from its inception, serving as consultants and evaluators on numerous areas of the project. Dr. Martin leads the health-related physical fitness evaluations (PACER test measuring cardiorespiratory endurance, push-up test to measure arm and shoulder strength) in all project schools, and analyzes this data for comparison with other middle-school students both locally and nationally. Dr. McCaughtry and Sara Flory examine cultural competence, the process whereby they seek to identify cultural distance that might exist between the project, the schools, students, families and communities served, and to develop strategies to bridge that distance in constructive and meaningful ways. This process affects project staff and evaluators, the development and implementation of project assessments (fitness testing practices, survey instruments), and the curricular interventions such as the EPEC Personal Conditioning module, Michigan Model for Health Education Nutrition and Tobacco modules used for project teachers.
In the first year, each school formed a Coordinated School Health Team consisting of students, parents, PE and health teachers, principals, and a representative from the food service department. Teams completed the Healthy School Action Tool to examine the health environment at their schools, and then, based on the assessments, designed action plans to improve or further support initiatives addressing any identified deficiencies. GWP awarded each school $25,000 to support implementation of their action plans, which are aimed at helping students move more, eat better, and not smoke.
The potential of this project to make substantive, sustainable changes in the lives and school experiences of youth in these underserved communities is enormous. We look forward to and are encouraged by the success realized in the past project year.