10 Steps – Healthier Kids Foundation

10 Steps to a Healthier You

10 Steps to a Healthier You! is a free, five-workshop series for parents and caregivers that provides strategies for implementing healthy habits in the home through the delivery of upstream messages with the intent of providing primary prevention of childhood and adolescent obesity.

The primary program outcome is that attendees of the workshop series experience change in attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge as a direct result of the content provided during the health education workshops, which leads to their sustained healthy behavior change.

Watch How Our “10 Steps” Program Can Help!

In partnership with Santa Clara Valley Health and Hospital System‘s Pediatric Healthy Lifestyle Center (PHLC), Healthier Kids Foundation worked in conjunction with PHLC staff to take their successful intervention strategies used in a clinical setting and move them into a primary childhood obesity prevention model for a broader community.

The curricula for the five-workshop series is based on The Expert Committee Recommendations Regarding the Prevention, Assessment, and Treatment of Child and Adolescent Overweight and Obesity” (Pediatrics Vol. 120 Supplement December 2007, p. S164-S192).

Workshop 1:

10 Steps to a Healthier You!

Workshop content focuses on lifestyle habits rather than body shape or weight; presents PHLC’s 10 Steps to a Healthier You! lifestyle recommendations; introduces the concept of trick foods; presents visuals to demonstrate the amount of sugar and fat in processed foods; provides shopping strategies to facilitate bringing only healthy foods into the home; reviews and discusses the need to make lifestyle changes as a family; and reviews and discusses the process of behavior change.

Workshop 2:

Structure and Routine

Workshop content focuses on an experiential approach to establishing structure in the home specifically related to mealtime and bedtime routines to support the implementation of the 10 Steps to a Healthier You! lifestyle recommendations; engages in activities that help families create and sustain routines; and discusses strategies for establishing effective communication between parents/caregivers and children and collaborative problem solving skills.

Workshop 3:

5 Keys to Raising a Healthy, Happy Eater

Workshop content focuses on the Division of Responsibility for feeding young children with an expanded curriculum that includes an experiential component where participants experience the child’s perspective of being restricted or forced to eat.

Workshop 4:

Boosting Healthy Habits

Workshop content focuses on empowering and supporting caregivers who have finished the 3-part series to continue practicing healthy habits at home by reviewing the 10 Healthy Steps and providing tools and strategies to succeed in the most challenging behavioral changes families face; limiting fast food, and increasing vegetable intake. During this workshop, caregivers are taught the basics of label reading and given an opportunity to practice making healthier choices. This workshop was developed in response to findings based on interviews conducted to participants 4-6 weeks after finishing the program.

Workshop 5:

Learning Steps

Workshop content focuses on supporting participants who have finished the 3-part series to continue practicing establishing routines and introduce implementing learning through play. Explore the creation and implementation of routines where parents and caregivers can encourage building reading and language skills as well as mathematics during family activities.

Additional Workshop:

Healthy Little Steps:

Content focuses on supporting county-wide messaging and positive change in a family setting by engaging children in a 15 minute activity that includes; Potter the Otter a Tale about water, self-regulation practice, and demonstrations of sugar content in common items including 100% fruit juice.

The 10 Steps to a Healthier You! workshop series was launched on December 2014 as a three-part series. The program has been expanded to a five-part series as of June 2022 to better support families in implementing behavioral change. Each workshop is approximately 1.5 hours in length, for a total of 7.5 hours of education.

The workshops are available in English, Spanish and Vietnamese and are currently on Zoom for your organization