Mayor Toni Harp’s Neighborhood Matters! New Haven (NMNH) promotes healthy lifestyle change through good nutrition education, balanced diet choices and regular physical activity.  That kind of substantive and community-minded approach to a public health challenge like obesity is why the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) awarded New Haven a 1st place Childhood Obesity Prevention Award in the medium city category.

Neighborhood Matters! New Haven brings together the City of New Haven and Yale University for programs like Cooking Matters, which provides nutrition education and training in healthy cooking to children and families.  The two also set up a neighborhood-based, family-oriented physical activity program to promote increased physical activity and a more active lifestyle among children and their families in the community.  The NMNH partnership hopes to expand these programs city-wide and reduce childhood obesity by 20 percent in New Haven by 2018.

The beverage industry understands that nutrition education is an important step towards learning good lifelong habits on balance and applauds Mayor Harp on her win.  That’s why ABA funded the USCM grant program, which included the $120,000 award to Mayor Harp’s program to help expand its educational programs.  Meaningful programs like NMNH are key to helping people gain the knowledge, skills and confidence needed to maintain healthy and active lifestyles for a lifetime.