In 2022, Health Net of West Michigan received a three-year $180,000 grant to support FitKids360 as the program transitioned to become an independent 501(c)(3) organization. FitKids360 is a seven-week healthy lifestyle program for children ages 5-17 and their parents or caregivers which combines basic nutrition, behavior, and exercise education with physical activities to help families develop healthy behaviors, eat better, and become active. The program is based on the Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital’s Healthy Counts 8-0 model, which has been proven to successfully treat pediatric obesity by taking a holistic approach that recognizes it is often a microcosm for other factors impacting the family environment.
Hear from program coordinator Maria Velasquez-Lopez and director of operations Carola Carassa as they share their insights into the work and the future of the program as it transitions to its own nonprofit organization.
Name and role with the organization:
Maria Velasquez-Lopez, FitKids360 Program Coordinator
Brief overview of your organization and what you do:
FitKids360 offers healthy lifestyle programs that provide basic health education on nutrition, behavior, and physical health to promote healthy habits and lives. As the program coordinator, I empower families to take ownership of their health and improve their well-being by ensuring families are supported throughout their health journey.
Please provide an overview of FitKids360 and how the program came to be. What are the primary goals?
FitKids360 began to address childhood obesity and the associated risks. The primary goals are to promote lifelong healthy habits to ultimately improve the quality of life of the families as a whole. We encourage supportive choices by providing education on nutrition, behavior, and physical activity. We aim to achieve these while having fun, empowering others, and building community within and beyond FitKids spaces.
How does this program support children and families?
We support them by walking alongside families and meeting them where they are at. This means we use a strength-based approach to empower them to make the changes they want to. We have community-based professionals and organizations who help us support our participants in numerous ways. We provide education and physical activity and emphasize family involvement to ensure the habits are collectively adopted. We have mentors (volunteers) who help us create supportive and welcoming environments where families can set SMART goals and get health-related questions answered.
How has youth/parent voice shaped this project? Please describe the work that you’ve engaged in so far and your hopes for the work through the remainder of the grant period.
We have conducted focus groups and surveys with parents and youth regarding the various programs we offer. This feedback has guided the activities, educational content, and opportunities we offer. We aim to have an engaging and beneficial impact, so their voice ensures our program and various projects are relevant and achievable for them. We have heard from numerous families that they wanted more opportunities to be involved with FitKids360 throughout the year, they wanted additional interactive and hands-on activities, and they wanted involvement in specific community events. FitKids has worked hard to incorporate their suggestions as much as capacity allows. We are looking to serve more families, particularly underserved and resource-denied communities so more children and families can reap the benefits of our program. We plan to continue involving families in the feedback process to ensure we remain an effective program.
How will becoming a separate nonprofit from Health Net help to grow and strengthen the program?
Separating from Health Net of West Michigan allows us to focus on our mission to combat childhood obesity and promote family wellness. It has allowed us to establish a brand, and we have done so by building a presence online and in the community. This allows us to continue sharing the mission and the programs we offer in multiple spaces to increase awareness and engagement of our programs. We have also been able to grow our partnerships with other community organizations and local businesses which have given us the support and resources to provide additional experiences to participants. Ultimately, it will allow us to expand our reach and impact to help more children and families to lead healthier lives.
What have you learned and what might you share with other organizations committed to supporting the health and wellbeing of children and families?
We’ve learned it’s crucial to let families be in the driver’s seat of their health journey and that we need to involve the entire family to have more sustainable and impactful changes. Living healthy and improving the quality of life is a lifelong process and requires a commitment to adopting and maintaining healthy habits. Families come to us from all walks of life with different priorities for their health, so we need to work with them at a pace that will encourage, not deter, behavioral changes. Empowering participants to take an active role in their journey to health and wellness while offering personalized support will make achieving our missions more attainable.
How does this work impact the Steelcase Foundation’s overarching mission of cultivating communities where children can thrive?
FitKids takes a holistic approach to promoting the health and wellness of children and their families. We build community and support and create equitable opportunities for involvement; we are committed to continue providing high-quality programming to cultivate communities where children can thrive.
Is there anything else you’d like to lift up about this work?
As the program coordinator, I have heard many inspiring success stories from our participants about the positive impact the program and the people have had on their lives. These stories highlight how FitKids360 makes a significant impact and difference in the lives of families. FitKids360 hopes to expand to new locations and continue developing partnerships with other organizations focused on health and wellness to continue providing education and support to live healthier lives. All of us can get involved in several ways to make these programs and ultimately our community thrive.
Name and role with the organization:
Carola Carassa, FitKids360 Director of Operations
Brief overview of your organization and what you do:
FitKids360 is a behavioral lifestyle change organization which focuses on family learning and support, specifically on nutrition, physical activity, and behavioral and emotional health. I help manage the daily operations of the organization, supervise the staff team, and partner with our sites to ensure our programming is successful.
Please provide an overview of FitKids360 and how the program came to be:
FitKids360 was created through our medical partners, such as our Medical Director, Dr Kathy Howard after the release of 2007 AAP obesity treatment guidelines and decided to create a program that specifically focuses on how families learn together and focus on habit changes in the areas of nutrition, such as portion sizes, avoiding sugary beverages, exercise within the family, and behavioral and emotional health, such as decreasing screen time, how to create structure in the family home, and improving quality of sleep.
What are the primary goals:
The primary goals of FitKids360 are to create an environment that is free of judgment, and to focus on the strengths of the families we work with. For example, if a family wants to focus on how to increase vegetable consumption or the habits around meals and snacks, FitKids360 focuses on ways in which they can remove devices from the table, decrease sugary beverages and junk food, increase whole grains, and why drinking water is important to stay hydrated.
How does this program support children and families:
We tell FitKids360 families, they are the experts in their homes. We may be providing guidance on how to increase physical activity daily, what a “balanced breakfast” includes or how to read a nutrition label, but if there is something we are suggesting in class and it is near to impossible for a family to implement, then don’t implement it. If it is a challenge, what are ways we can lessen it so our families can feel successful? Everything we do is free of charge. We provide transportation to and from our programs, and we also provide various outlets for our families to continuously be involved. We offer a seven-week class to introduce families to the general themes. But then we also offer a couch to 5k style training program during the summer. In addition, FitKids offers a gardening program for families who are interested in increasing their food autonomy, and then we also offer cooking classes throughout the year to continue their journey.
How has youth/parent voice shaped this project:
We heard from families that there are little activities for their pre/teens to participate in. They’re not old enough to be on a gym floor, but they’re too old to be participating in activities that don’t challenge them or intrigue them. The Youth Mentor Garden centers on what teenagers or preteens need while in middle school or high school. It focuses on how they will be able to find support in their social circles, how they can improve their skills, such as CPR training and meditative breathing to manage anxiety and stress.
Please describe the work that you’ve engaged in so far and your hopes for the work through the remainder of the grant period:
We have been building an organization from the inside out, especially around our data and learning management system. There have been improvements in the way we onboard new sites, and my hope is to have a few modules ready for onboarding a new site. This would include training on the history of FitKids360, how we cultivate a judgment free zone for families and their children, and how we create a safe learning environment and center the child and their family.
How will becoming a separate nonprofit from Health Net help to grow and strengthen the program?
While having guidance from Health Net, especially when looking at HIPAA compliance, or how to be a trauma-informed organization has been incredibly helpful, becoming our own separate nonprofit will allow us to diversify funding sources and help us in having different relationships in the community. Health Net and FitKids360 are different organizations with different focuses that work with different populations. Though both address health and racial equity, our approaches are different, and the clients are different.
What have you learned and what might you share with other organizations committed to supporting the health and wellbeing of children and families?
Health is not a one size fit all. Therefore, the approach cannot be one size fits all. When we talk about health care, there are so many roadblocks for a family seeking care and finding providers or physicians who can, not only speak their language, but understand their viewpoint. Medical care, and health care has been a very top-down approach, and a lot of physicians and doctors do not view their patients as having bodily autonomy. Women and especially women of color, are constantly having to justify and provide reasons for why they are seeking care for their family.
How does this work impact the Steelcase Foundation’s overarching mission of cultivating communities where children can thrive?
We view our children and the young people as future leaders of the community. Zip codes often dictate health outcomes and how children view themselves. It is important for children to understand they are not doomed to a life of lead poisoning because they grew up in a certain zip code. There needs to be a change in how we view our community, and it needs to center not just on the children of this generation, but children of the following generations. In the United States, we have a short-term vision for the way we live our lives and the ways we conduct business. If we are thinking of our grandchildren, and what we are leaving for them, would we do things differently?
Is there anything else you’d like to lift-up about this work?
FitKids360 is doing the impossible with impossible restraints. We have two full-time staff, a part-time Interim Executive Director, and a part-time project manager. To do this work, we need to have more staff who can do the resource navigation and can provide follow-up. There are a lot of people that are falling through the cracks and FitKids360 is witnessing it.
