Community

CHLN brings value to our community through partnership in projects, dissemination of our work and through our Weighing In program. Each year this value is quantified as “community benefit.” Specifically, as a result of Internal Revenue Service guidelines for nonprofit hospitals, Children's Mercy must report their community benefit each year across all departments and units which is guided by the Children’s Mercy triennial needs assessment. The most recent assessment was conducted in 2019 and identified nutrition, physical activity and weight as a significant priority health need of our community. In FY20, the Center provided over $930,000 in community benefits to meet this need. Two major activities that contributed to this work to benefit our community are dissemination of our work and our community collaborative which is called Weighing In.

Several CHLN members disseminated their work to community audiences in 2021, aiming to support the use of

evidence-based practices in community settings.

• Dr. Helena Laroche’s team presented on food pantries and COVID to community partners at the food bank.
• In partnership with community stakeholders, Dr. Lauren Ptomey’s team created a podcast, Celiac Disease and Down Syndrome, and a handout, Healthy Eating for Individuals with Down Syndrome for the Down syndrome community.
• Dr. Lisa Mische Lawson’s team created training videos to support swim instructors, parents, therapists and recreation professionals to teach children with autism spectrum disorder swimming and water safety skills.
• Dr. David White presented on exercise and diabetes to the National Youth Sports Health and Safety Institute
• Dr. Jordan Carlson’s team developed a classroom-based physical activity instructional guide for school stakeholders and was invited by district administrators in the Kansas City Public Schools (KCPS) district to provide professional development to KCPS teachers around the provision of physical activity in the classroom (outside of PE and recess). The team developed the toolkit with teacher input, trained teachers on how to use the toolkit, presented on the importance and role of classroom-based physical activity and talked with classroom teachers, PE teachers and school leaders about supporting school-wide implementation of classroom-based physical activity.
  

Despite the many challenges due to COVID-19 restrictions and staff shortages of the previous year, 2021 was an equivocal success for the Weighing In program in achieving our strategic goals. Our mission is to align community programs to promote healthy lifestyles through collaborative community-based approaches. This positive impact in our community is perfectly envisioned in two of our ongoing initiatives, the Kansas City Physical Activity Plan and the Children’s Mercy Community Garden.

The Kansas City Physical Activity Plan was released in March 2021 and includes strategies and priorities to create a culture of active living across six societal sectors (Early Childhood, Schools, Healthcare, Faith-Based settings, Parks and Recreation and Infrastructure). Since March we have added two additional sectors — Sport and Mass Media — and will be adding Business and Public Health in 2022.

Weighing In serves as the backbone organization for this grassroots effort and has hosted over 120 meetings since 2020 to engage with our community partners in this work. Implementation projects focused on Kansas City Physical Activity Plan strategies are ongoing. For example, the health care sector has created a work group focused on obtaining insurance reimbursement for physical activity counseling during clinical visits (Strategy 19), established a Just Walk program featuring Children’s Mercy clinical providers (Strategy 20) and is working the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine to incorporate physical activity and lifestyle medicine instruction in the medical school curriculum(Strategy 21). Visit kcphysicalactivityplan.org for more information.

Weighing In program manager Shelly Summar has led the development and growth of the Children’s Mercy Community Garden, located just across from the Adele Hall campus and adjacent to the Don Chisholm Building. The Community Garden provides more than just fresh fruits and vegetables; it creates educational opportunities for the community and awareness both within and outside our institution about healthy lifestyles.

Started in 2018, Shelly has cultivated multiple internal and external partnerships, including with the Children’s Mercy Hunger Free Hospital Task Force, to provide produce to families participating in home visiting programs. Another successful partnership is with the youth empowerment program, Girls on the Run. This local group met multiple times each week at the garden as part of their community impact project in Spring 2021. Efforts are currently ongoing with Rehabilitation Medicine to create new opportunities for patients with disabilities receiving care at Children’s Mercy to access and participate in garden activities as part of their clinical care. Finally, the creation of the Community Garden has created a healthy bookend to the northern edge of Health Science District, which also stretches across a three-block range including Hospital Hill Park, the inclusive playground at Nutter Park outside the Children’s Mercy entrance, Crown Garden in Longfellow Park/Ronald McDonald House and Sheila Kemper Dietrich Park. All told, the community garden had 71 different individuals volunteer (over 280 total hours) to help grow 650 pounds of produce in 2021.

Throughout all of activities, Weighing In continued to carry out our normal work, including hosting working groups and quarterly meetings; communicating healthy lifestyle research and regional projects in 98 newsletters sent to our nearly 900 partners; holding leadership positions on regional committees/organizations (Missouri Council on Activity and Nutrition, Missouri Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dotte Agency, BikeWalkKC, Kansas City Youth Sports Workshop, etc.); and disseminating our work at a variety local, national and international meetings (American College of Sports Medicine, American Public Health Association, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, National Health Outreach Conference, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, etc.) and in peer reviewed publications (Childhood Obesity, JMIR Formative Research). The Weighing In team in 2021 included Shelly

Summar, Bryce Miller, Emily Meissen-Sebelius, Matt Kleinmann, Elizabeth Wilson and Robin Shook.