The Pajaro Valley is one of 41 sites in the nation selected to receive a special grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to improve health through a program that provides exercise and healthy food to children and families.

The United Way of Santa Cruz County’s Go For Health! collaborative was awarded the $360,000 grant after a rigorous selection process that drew more than 500 proposals from across the country. The Go For Health! collaborative will work to increase children’s access to fresh fruits and vegetables and opportunities to participate in physical activity. Specifically, Go For Health! will refine and share community data with local leaders and advocates; address city and regional policies regulating food outlets and environment features such as sidewalks and bike lanes; and help corner stores offer more produce from local farms.

Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, focuses on changing policies and environments to support active living and healthy eating among children and families. The program places special emphasis on reaching children who are at the highest risk of obesity on the bases of income, race/ethnicity and geographic location.

“Addressing the issue of childhood obesity through an environmental change strategy is perhaps the most effective way of helping our children maintain a healthy weight,” said Mary Lou Goeke, executive director of the United Way of Santa Cruz County. “That is, we must change the environment where our children grow up so that it is easy to make a healthy choice and difficult to make the unhealthy one. This grant will help the Go For Health! collaborative in its efforts to bring health-minded, lasting changes to Watsonville and the Pajaro Valley.”

According to the California Healthy Kids Survey, 36 percent of Pajaro Valley Unified School District’s fifth-, seventh- and ninth-graders were overweight or obese. And, while the Pajaro Valley is home to an abundance of fresh produce, these fruits and vegetables rarely end up on farmworkers’ tables or in their children’s school cafeterias.

“To reverse this epidemic, communities are going to have to rally around their kids and provide the opportunities they need to be healthy,” said Robert Wood Johnson Foundation president and CEO Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, M.D., M.B.A. “Through this project, the United Way of Santa Cruz County and its partners are doing what it takes to make sure children lead better lives.”

Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities is a $33 million national program and the foundation’s largest investment to date in community-based solutions to childhood obesity. With nine leading sites chosen in late 2008, the program now spans 50 communities from Seattle to Puerto Rico.