The Staten Island Child Wellness Initiative (SICWI) is a new collaboration established to address child wellness in Staten Island, New York, using the collective impact model. The collaboration was originally formed in response to the urgent issue of child obesity that exists across Staten Island and the strong desire to reduce and reverse the rising rates of obesity that have taken a significant toll on the health and wellbeing of the borough's residents. In response to the severity of the borough's health needs, the Office of the Staten Island (SI) Borough President convened a Health and Wellness Taskforce with partners from across the health continuum to explore the issue of childhood obesity. Due to past success with similarly structured initiatives, the Office of the SI BP recommended that the Staten Island Partnership for Community Wellness (SIPCW) take the lead in establishing a coalition to develop a borough-wide strategic plan. SIPCW convened community stakeholders, schools, youth-serving organizations, food justice partners, other community-based organizations (CBOs), and faith-based leaders from across 50 organizations to explore the drivers of childhood obesity on SI. SIPCW partnered with the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University (NYU) and The New York Academy of Medicine to help collect community-level data and facilitate meetings that informed the development of an action plan. In refining its approach and determining how it would focus its collaborative efforts, the stakeholder group explored a number of dimensions for addressing issues associated with childhood obesity--the tensions posed by universal versus targeted, prevention versus intervention, and individual versus collective focuses--and developed guiding principles that will inform the action plan. As a result, the SICWI has focused on the entire borough with targeted interventions and equity targets aimed at neighborhoods with the highest rates of childhood obesity. The group has articulated a shared vision and overarching goal of improving child health and wellness in SI by bringing 80% of SI children through 8th grade to a healthy weight by 2026 by addressing access and opportunities for active living, availability and affordability of fresh, healthy food, and community-wide partnerships that shape children's home, school, recreational, and health care environments. The group's proposed goals will be supported by broad evidence-based interventions specific to SI. The New York Academy of Medicine and the Staten Island Partnership for Community Wellness (SIPCW) are proud to present The Staten Island Child Wellness Initiative: Common Agenda. The following document summarizes the planning and goal-setting process for The Staten Island Child Wellness Initiative. It also describes the next steps required to launch the initiative and a framework to structure its implementation.
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