Kids - 'Go for your life': An initiative to support healthy eating and physical activity and reduce the risk of overweight and obesity in children

Kids - 'Go for your life' is a state-wide initiative aimed to improve healthy eating and physical activity levels of children and in doing so reduce the risk of overweight and obesity. Currently the initiative will be implemented for 5 years. The primary element of the inititiative - the Award Program, works with primary schools and early childhood services, such as child care, family day care and kindergartens, to support healthy eating and physical activity through an Award Program, using a health promoting schools approach. Involvement in the Award Program is voluntary and those settings that join are provided with free resources, professional development for staff and links with local health professionals to support them to make policy and practise changes to reach award status. These policy and practise changes include implementing a range of evidence based health promotion activities to promote and support children's healthy eating and physical activity, including these activities within policy and including these healthy messages within curriculum and communication with parents. The program also builds the capacity of local communities to further support implementation of the Award Program in children's settings and promote broader supportive environments for children's healthy eating and phsycial activity. Local capcacity is built through: 1. Developing networks of existing local health professionals and providing them with resources, training and support to implement the Award program locally within schools and services. 2. Funding is also provided to local governments to employ a local "champion" to drive the Award Program locally and influence local policies that will support healthy eating and physical activity for children. Social marketing is also undertaken to support healthy eating and physical activity behaviour change within schools, early chilhood services and within the home.