Funding Strategy: Healthy Schools

Grant Examples

If more kids attend a healthy school where they are served nutritious meals, have opportunities for exercise and access to basic health care, they will be better able to learn and carry healthy habits into adulthood.

We invest in the following areas to make Colorado's schools healthier:

• Provide children nutritious meals, snack and beverage options in school and preschool by:
  • Providing and promoting only healthy foods and beverages
  • Incorporating nutrition education into school curricula for all grade levels
  • Building or re-engineering kitchen facilities to prepare healthy foods
  • Enacting healthy school vending machine standards
  • Supporting school meal programs that exceed current government standards
• Require that children are physically active every day by:
  • Building infrastructures necessary for physical activity
  • Providing safe routes for students to walk and bike to school
• Engage students in what it means to be healthy by incorporating health education including nutrition education, high-risk behavior prevention and sex education into the classroom.
• Provide children with access to health care services by:
  • Improving access to preventive health care services, anticipatory guidance, chronic disease management and care coordination
  • Enrolling students in public programs, especially Medicaid/CHP+
  • Increasing and diversifying funding for school-based health centers
• Build leadership, parental support and political will for health and wellness in schools by:
  • Providing health care and wellness programming to families and school staff
  • Enacting healthy school food, physical activity and health education standards
  • Increasing federal school meal reimbursement
  • Rewarding schools that become healthy schools
  • Engaging school leaders in the connection between healthy students and improved academic performance