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HealthierUS School Challenge:
Recognizing Nutrition Excellence
in Schools
 HealthierUS School Challenge
Obesity is a growing concern for school children in the United States. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) believes that schools should be taking a leadership role in helping students learn to make healthy eating and active lifestyle choices. Many schools have already made changes to their school nutrition environments, improved the quality of the foods served, and now provide students with more nutritious, healthy choices. USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) wants to encourage schools to achieve such results, and has established the HealthierUS
School Challenge to encourage schools to go further and to recognize those who
chose to do so.
 HealthierUS Schools
HealthierUS Schools can be certified as either Bronze, Silver, Gold
or Gold of Distinction Schools, according to standards established by FNS. The objective is to recognize schools that take specific steps to improve their programs and address obesity and to encourage other schools to follow their lead. Ultimately, FNS would like to see all schools take the challenge!
How Does It Work?
Schools must meet a basic set of criteria. To be certified, a school must:
- be an elementary school
- be enrolled as a Team Nutrition School
- offer reimbursable lunches that demonstrate healthy menu planning practices and principles of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and that meet USDA nutrition standards
- provide nutrition education to students
- provide students the opportunity for physical activity
- maintain an Average Daily Participation of school enrollment for reimbursable lunches of at least 62 percent for Bronze or 70 percent for Silver and Gold Schools
- adhere to guidelines established by FNS for foods served/sold in schools outside the National School Lunch Program.
Application
FNS has developed application packets that detail criteria that must be met for the
four award level designations. The application packets request specific information to verify a school's adherence to the criteria. The school's completed application packet must be evaluated by a local review panel, and endorsed by the school's leadership, including its principal.
Submission Procedure
The school's completed application packet should be sent to the Child Nutrition State agency. The State agency will evaluate and forward the application packet to the USDA FNS Regional Office.
Take the Challenge!
- Review the criteria and instructions, and other resources, to assist you in completeing your application
- Download the application packet
- Convene a review panel
- Complete the review
- Obtain the required approvals and signatures
- Submit the completed application packet to the Child Nutrition agency
- Certification as a HealthierUS School is for 2 years, from the date of approval.
Recognition
FNS will review all completed applications and award schools that successfully meet the Challenge with an appropriate recognition plaque. In addition, the recognized schools will be listed on the Team Nutrition Web site, may be chosen to be a part of special FNS media events and may receive other awards that promote and support the principles of the Challenge.
Details
Team Nutrition is the nutrition education initiative of the Child Nutrition Programs. The applications and all Team Nutrition materials are available free of charge to schools participating in the school meals programs.
Last modified:
03/02/2009
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