Heart Health Education: Collaborations

The Hope Heart Institute partners with other organizations to bring its mission to a broader audience. Recent partners include:

Muevete! Clark County

іMuevete! is a coalition of stakeholders from the health-related sector committed to supporting the health and wellness of Clark County.  The following agencies and community organizations are represented: The Hope Heart Institute, Molina Healthcare, Sea Mar, Clark County Public Health, US Forest Service, LULAC, Vancouver and Evergreen Public Schools, Clark College, WA State Commissioner’s Office of Hispanic Affairs (for Clark, Cowlitz, Pacific, Skamania and Wahkiakum Counties), Project Healthy Lifestyle. 

іMuevete! Clark County organized the Vancouver area’s Binational Health Week (BHW) Kick-Off Event in 2011.  The coalition is currently engaged in strategic planning. 

The overarching aim of the King County Food and Fitness Initiative (KCFFI) is to support healthy eating and active living among vulnerable children and their families by promoting environments that support healthy behaviors. Our goal is to improve the food and physical activity environments in two neighborhoods in Seattle, King County (Delridge and White Center) through local action and promotion of policy and systems change.

KCFFI’s partners, like The Hope, help guide/support the work in schools and communities. Currently, we’re supporting this work through Family Health Nights as well as in an advisory capacity.

Let’s Move! Blaine Coalition

In September of 2011, Blaine’s City Council unanimously passed a motion to become a Let’s Move City.  Let’s Move! is a national initiative with four pillars.
1.    Provide parents and caregivers the tools they need to make healthy choices in early childhood.
2.    Improve nutrition in schools.
3.    Increase physical activity opportunities.
4.    Make healthy food more affordable and accessible.

As a Let’s Move! City, Blaine has committed to making at least one lasting, systemic change in each of the four Let’s Move! Pillars in an effort to prevent childhood obesity.  Some of their plans include linking a few parks to create a walking path and increase mobility within the city as well as exploring a partnership with a local farm to provide community supported agriculture (CSA) shares to parents with the school being a drop site.  

The Hope is providing technical assistance to the school as they complete an assessment to identify strengths and weaknesses with regard to student health and safety.  The Hope is also training high school students in our Kids Take Heart Program so they can use it in an after school club capacity with elementary students.  This coalition is gaining in strength and beginning with the end in mind. 

Molina Healthcare of Washington

Molina and The Hope co-sponsor Family Health Nights at Puget Sound area elementary schools.  Heart health is about the whole family, so special events like these provide information for every member of the family and include tips on how parents and children can work together to improve their health.  The goal is to promote healthy eating and physical activity while building heart disease awareness. 

Molina supported four family health nights in 2011 and five in 2012.

Coordinated School Health Program

The Coordinated School Health Program is a partnership between the Department of Health and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction that seeks to ensure healthy schools and healthy, successful students by coordinating effective policies and programs, and encouraging school, community and family involvement through shared information and communication.  It’s supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  The Hope Heart Institute is lending staff time and support to the effort, helping to bring together key stakeholders.

For more on the Coordinated School Health Program, visit here. 

Generous Funders  

The Hope recently partnered with Quota International, Rotary and Kiwanis of Kent to sponsor Kent School District's use of a Kids Take Heart curriculum kit during the 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 school year.  The kit served about 2650 students.

Washington Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation & Dance

The Washington Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (WAHPERD) is one of the oldest professional associations in Washington dedicated to the advancement and promotion of its allied fields.  WAHPERD's mission is to provide advocacy, professional development and unity for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Dance and Adapted Physical Education Professionals and Students, in order to enhance and promote Health and Fitness for all people in Washington State.  Teachers, Administrators, Researchers, Coaches, Students and other professionals belong to the Washington Alliance.  As a professional member of the Alliance, The Hope consistently shares information about its educational programs (i.e. Kids Take Heart) and professional development opportunities at their annual conferences and conventions.  The Hope is honored to be affiliated with WAHPERD.

 The Hope is honored to serve on the Healthy Schools Summit Planning Committee.  The summit, in its fourth year, draws over 400 participants annually.  Participants include school administrators, teachers and health professionals from around Washington State.   It provides strategies, evidence, skills and tools to advocate for and create healthy schools.  When communities, families, and schools work in partnership to create a seamless web of services – learning barriers decrease and academic achievement increases.

Auburn Valley YMCA

 The Hope is proud to be partnering with the Auburn Valley YMCA in 2010 to bring cardiovascular-specific education modules to Healthy Lifestyles™, and provide regular health screenings for program participants so they can more easily track their progress. We’re thrilled to be an active part of this high-impact program, and look forward to seeing its participants making lasting, healthy changes!

The YMCA Healthy Lifestyles™ program is a ten month, 22-session behavior modification program for those seeking to change their lifestyle-based health risk factors. It was developed for the YMCA with the Stanford School of Medicine’s Prevention Research Center, and has been launched with great success at YMCA’s all over the U.S.

In 2005, The Hope and Pacific Science Center partnered to educate children about the importance of a healthy lifestyle through a Discovery Cart and a Live Demonstration.  They were some of the most colorful, humorous, and intriguing ways to learn about how the heart works.

The Heart Discovery Cart can still be found at Pacific Science Center. It is a set of hands-on activities engaging visitors in an exploration of the heart and circulatory system in a playful, inquisitive way. The various activities aim to provide visitors with new knowledge about the function of the circulatory system and the biology of heart disease, to inspire awareness of heart health.

The Superhero Makeover Show, was a science demonstration disguised as a reality TV show, that engaged the audience in activities to demonstrate how the heart functions and why it is important to our health and that of a superhero. This demonstration is no longer in use.