The Rutgers Culture of Health School Program (RCHSP), which was established with a $100,000 grant from the The Horizon Foundation for New Jersey, was launched in the Edison Township Public Schools in February this year. A community outreach initiative under the New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health, RCHSP fosters and promotes lifestyles centered around physical activity and nutritional literacy, and is a joint endeavor of the New Jersey Healthy Kids Initiative (NJHKI) and the Department of Family and Community Health Sciences (FCHS), a unit of Rutgers Cooperative Extension (RCE).
In addition to supporting school-aged students, Lisa Rossman-Murphy, a faculty member in the Department of Kinesiology and member of the RCHSP Physical Literacy team, used the program as an opportunity to expose her undergraduate students to the real-life application of content she teaches in her courses.
“This project provides experiential learning for the Rutgers student volunteers. In the Pediatric Physical Development and Fitness course, students learn the importance of movement opportunities for development and that kids who are more comfortable with movement skills will be more physically active and at less risk of chronic health issues. Through this project, we are witnessing a wide range of physical literacy levels among school children, and we are providing knowledge and opportunities for improvement. I find this very exciting and rewarding.”
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