A new multimillion-dollar grant is coming to our state thanks in part to the Kansas Health Foundation’s Board of Directors.

This grant to the Kansas Health Policy Authority could help Kansas take a big step forward toward the goal of improving children’s access to health care because the funding will be used to support the development of an electronic online application for children applying for HealthWave and Medicaid as well as the placement of 12 community outreach workers at safety-net clinics across the state to increase enrollment levels.

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A $1.28 million Kansas Health Foundation grant is starting to get schools across the state up and running with the K-FIT program, a project that helps measure and improve students’ fitness levels.

The Kansas Fitness Information Tracking program will give interested schools Fitnessgram, an online assessment tool, at no cost for the next three years. K-FIT will measure participating students’ aerobic capacity, body composition, muscular strength, muscular endurance and flexibility. Using this range of assessments will help children know where their strengths are and how to make improvements in other areas.

K-FIT is currently enrolling about 12 schools across the state as a pilot group to use the program this fall, says Jane Shirley, program manager for coordinated school health at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. “Our target will be that in spring semester, we will have enrolled 290 schools,” she says.

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On a crisp October day, about 200 Lawrence area residents gathered at the Building a Healthier Lawrence event to hear a national expert offer ideas on how their town can encourage more physical activity and become more accessible to pedestrians and bicyclists.

Mark Fenton, the host of the PBS series “America’s Walking,” is an engineer and champion walker who travels the country helping cities find ways to make it easier for people to walk, bike and use mass transit.

The Kansas Health Foundation brought Fenton and Green Living expert Sara Snow to Lawrence so they could meet with the Foundation’s board and headline this community event at the Lawrence Arts Center.

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Committing to eating locally grown foods doesn’t have to happen overnight. You can get there one small step at a time, Green Living expert Sara Snow told a crowd at the Building a Healthier Lawrence event.

Why would eating local foods make such a big difference? On average, foods travel 1,500 miles from where they are produced to where they’re eaten, Snow says. That means a lot of wasted petroleum, chemical ripeners and preservatives that could be avoided by eating at least some local foods.

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Many United Methodist churches across Kansas are gearing up to learn new ways to put their faith into action.

A new program, Leadership and Faith Transforming Communities, is a joint effort between the Kansas Health Foundation, the United Methodist Church and the Kansas Leadership Center. With the help of a three-year Health Foundation grant, it aims to help revitalize the United Methodist Church in Kansas, enhance the commitment to community health and increase civic leadership.

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