HealthCorps

What it does

HealthCorps is a national service program with tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. The program claims to impact from 400 to 600 high school students per school per year.

The HealthCorps in-school program shows teens practical life skills through interactive seminars focused on the value and power of students' bodies and minds. HealthCorps expects teens to become educated consumers and health activists, and teens are encouraged to develop positive behavioral shifts that enhance self-esteem.

HealthCorps is based on a peer-mentor model. Each HealthCorps "Coordinator" is assigned one school in which he or she leads seminars five days a week on fitness, nutrition and mental resilience. The seminars are taught through health or other academic classes or through after school clubs, as designated by the school principal. Seminar content is included in a 250-page curriculum and program guide developed by the HealthCorps Advisory Board.

HealthCorps believes that through service learning, the students share some of the messaging with their friends and parents—thus increasing the reach of HealthCorps' message.

Outside of schools, HealthCorps engages in several community events such as health fairs. Their largest health fairs are branded "Highway to Health" festivals.

Impact

In June 2009, Dr. Mehmet Oz presented results of a two-year efficacy study overseen by a methodologist from Cornell University and funded by Affinity Health Plan. The study has not been published. All information on the study thus far released has come from Oz. Results of the study found benefits of HealthCorps on three dimensions. Soft drink consumption decreases by 0.61 times per week. Participants are 36% more likely to report they are more physically active. Participants score 10.7% higher on the test of health knowledge. These estimates assume zero benefit for dropouts; excluding dropouts results in larger effect size.

History

HealthCorps was designed in 2003 as a 10-month pilot in partnership with Columbia Presbyterian Hospital as a response to “Healthy People 2010” - an initiative of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to advance a nationwide disease prevention agenda that included fighting childhood obesity. As a result, cardiothoracic surgeon, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and his wife, Lisa, founded the educational program based upon the pilot under the auspices of the Foundation for Advanced Cardiac Therapies (“FACT”), a Palm Beach, Florida-based 501c3 organization.

In 2004, HealthCorps launched a lunchtime workshop, at George Washington Educational Campus in Washington Heights, New York, led by “HealthCorps Coordinators” – recent college graduates with an interest in health careers who serve as peer-mentors. These Coordinators were trained and supervised by staff from the Touro College Children's Health Education Foundation. A second school, Cathedral High School in Manhattan, was added to the pilot in 2005. By 2006, the HealthCorps network grew to six schools in New York City as well as the Academy of the New Church in Pennsylvania and Cliffside Park and North Bergen High Schools in New Jersey.

HealthCorps chose youth as its major focus in order to maximize the impact of its programming. Teenagers are often: significant family purchase influencers, family caregivers and autonomous buyers with some expendable income. They also have great capacity to influence a large network of peers.

Original Programming & First Written Curriculum

2007, HealthCorps embarked on a national rollout, extending its health education and mentoring program to 36 schools, including 29 in New York City, two in New Jersey, one in Florida, and one in Pennsylvania. In the same year, the organization incorporated as a 501(c)3 in New York under its own name “HealthCorps, Inc.” and closed out the Florida-based 501(c)3, FACT. By this time all Coordinators were expected to serve full-time, five days a week during the school year teaching both in and out of the classroom. HealthCorps realized that along with delivering curriculum, the program and its network of schools serve as a unique opportunity for discovery of how best to communicate with and understand teens, identify best practices for behavioral change and identify effective regional, state and federal school policy. Thus, the name “Living Labs”.

To meet the demands of a thriving program, HealthCorps staff and Board members developed the first written curriculum - combining lessons created by the original nine coordinators with content from the YOU™ book series authored by HealthCorps Chairman Dr. Mehmet Oz and Advisory Board Member Dr. Michael Roizen of the Cleveland Clinic.

Curriculum Enhancements

Since 2008, as HealthCorps continued to expand into more schools across the US, the curriculum has been regularly enhanced and updated. HealthCorps staff, board members, and coordinators are vital to curriculum creation and have edited lessons based on their expertise or practical experiences in the classroom. In order to further enhance the curriculum components, HealthCorps partners and has partnered with evidence-based programs such as Teen Battle Chef from FamilyCook Productions, the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, Sahaja Meditation, Hawn Foundation and Cooking Matters.

Through the HealthCorps curriculum evolution, emphasis is increasingly placed on, students developing knowledge as well as skills. Research has demonstrated that developing skills is key to supporting behavioral changes for all ages.

The core curriculum consists of an introduction to the program and its methodology followed by twelve lessons broken into four units that focus on skill for:

Also included is a supplemental library of approximately sixteen lessons on healthy living for use at the facilitator’s discretion.

Coordinators lead lessons both in and out of the classroom, as well as after school through clubs (e.g. cooking, fitness and youth empowerment) and other activities.

On the individual level, the curriculum and activities are intended to build resilience and leadership skills as well as raise awareness of healthy behaviors and foster positive change. On the school and community level, HealthCorps programs are intended to promote positive changes to the environment and to policy – and to ultimately be absorbed into the culture of the community.

Extracurricular Activities

Activism and experiential learning are an important aspect of HealthCorps programming. Students plan and participate in school-wide and community extracurricular activities such as health fairs, walking contests, staff development seminars, gardening, food demonstrations, service projects and much more. HealthCorps activities challenge students to share the knowledge and skills they have learned with their friends, families and communities and to change their world for the better. School and community-wide activities are interspersed throughout the school year as a part of the HealthCorps experience to enhance lessons taught in the classroom.

Programming Enhancements

In 2013, in response to requests from educators for training in the curriculum, HealthCorps piloted a secondary professional development program called “HealthCorps University” in California with the Sacramento Unified School District. The program was chosen as one of twelve to receive pro bono consulting services to affirm its efficacy as a part of the Morgan Stanley Strategy Challenge.

Each HealthCorps Living Lab also partners with mission-aligned organizations on a local level such as MD Anderson Cancer Institute’s ASPIRE Program (Houston, TX, 2013 - 2016) and The Sacramento Food Bank (Sacramento, CA, 2010).

Scale

By 2013 the Living Labs program had expanded to 62 schools across 13 states and the District of Columbia. The organization also established a partnership with CK12.org to provide a free digitalized version of its curriculum so schools without HealthCorps programming could still benefit from the organizations discoveries.

In 2016, the HealthCorps Board and staff made the strategic decision to cap the Living Labs around the country to no more than 20-30 schools in order to focus on scaling its impact through HealthCorps University. Effective techniques and best practices in the Living Labs continue to inform the HealthCorps University program. Since its inception in 2003, through both its programs, HealthCorps University and the Living Labs have impacted approximately two million students. 261 young people have served as Coordinators the majority of whom have gone on to medical school. 144 high schools across America have served as Living Labs.

Current Curriculum

This 5th edition of the HealthCorps curriculum was significantly enhanced as the result of a research project begun in 2013 in partnership with the Albert Einstein School of Medicine and Family Cook Productions. The project was funded by the National Institute of Health (“NIH”) through the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (“NIDKK”). One of the key project objectives is to disseminate the USDA Dietary Guidelines for adolescents and utilize student leaders to share skill-based strategies for adhering to them to make these healthy behaviors more socially desirable among youth. This was accomplished in part by designing a personal health reflection survey, that is conducted online, that results in a personalized assessment: “Healthy Me Snapshot” (HMS) for each student participant. The HMS identifies which Dietary Guideline(s) a given student should prioritize to improve and supports students to target this behavior by setting specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and timely (“SMART”) goals. This assessment and goal-setting system has now been incorporated into this edition of the HealthCorps curriculum and eight of the core lessons focus on Dietary Guidelines.

For purposes of evaluation and/or research, Coordinators in Living Lab schools around the country deliver Chapter 2 and administer the Healthy Me Snapshot survey to students prior to administering Chapters 3 through 6. Coordinators administer the Healthy Me Reflection exercise to students after they have participated in the Core Curriculum Units (Chapters 2 – 6). This specific delivery of the HealthCorps Chapters and units is called the “Healthy Me Journey.” Each unit of the core curriculum relies on the performance indicators of the National Health Education Standards and the Characteristics of Effective Health Education, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most students participate in the chapter units on a weekly basis over the course of a semester.

The supplemental lessons (Chapters 8-12) are administered at the discretion of a Coordinator and according to a school’s specific needs. This new edition includes new modules on organ donation education and diabetes prevention.

Evaluation and Research

To date, research and program evaluation conducted and funded by Affinity Health Plans[1], the NIH/NIDKK/Albert Einstein School of Medicine[2], HealthCorps and the Desert Healthcare Foundation[3] have demonstrated that weekly participation in HealthCorps through the curriculum is associated with increased physical activity, self-confidence, consumption of fruit, vegetables and water and decreased consumption of soda. Research and evaluation have also shown that HealthCorps is significantly impactful working with other non-profit programming to enhance their outcomes (FamilyCook Productions[4], MD Anderson Cancer Institute[5]). Evaluating the quantitative and qualitative effects of both the HealthCorps Living Labs and HealthCorps University programs is an ongoing process aimed at ensuring greater impact into the future.

[1] “Effect of HealthCorps, a High School Peer Mentoring Program, on Youth Diet and

Physical Activity”, Childhood Obesity, 2011, John Cawley, PhD

[2] “Behaviors and Knowledge of HealthCorps New York City High School Students:

Nutrition, Mental Health, and Physical Activity”, Journal of School Health, 2015, Moonseong Heo, PhD

[3] “Impact of HealthCorps Program in the Western & Eastern Coachella Valley”, Evaluation Report for Desert HealthCare, Joanne Stevelos, MPH

[4] “Efficacy of Teen Battle Chef program to shift the Academic Performance and Health

Behaviors in NYC High School Students”, Abstract, AHA Scientific Session, 2014, Hyunwoo Park, MS

[5] “The Role of a Mentor and Champion in Implementing ASPIRE (A Smoking

Prevention Interactive Experience)”, Abstract, National Tobacco or Health Conference, Austin 2016, Alexander Prokhorov, MD, PhD

Organizational Growth

HealthCorps embarked on a national rollout, extending its health educational and mentoring program to 36 total schools, including 29 New York City high schools and the first Florida school, Palm Beach Gardens Community High School in 2007. It added a second school in Pennsylvania, Lower Moreland High School. To meet the demands of a thriving program, HealthCorps staff redesigned the curriculum and integrated the program into regular classrooms and communities in all five New York City boroughs. The program also added in-school activism projects such as Healthy Halloween, Healthy Bodegas, and Healthy Steps pedometer contests and community activism programs such as the Highway to Health festivals.

By 2008, HealthCorps had grown to 45 schools and three additional states - California, Texas, and Ohio. In Florida, the second largest state for the Program, eight schools, including institutions in Miami, Tampa, and West Palm Beach were added. HealthCorps expanded to Arizona and Mississippi in 2009. Delaware, the District of Columbia, and Oregon gained HealthCorps in schools in 2010.

Geographical reach

As of December 2010 HealthCorps was active in the following areas: