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Welcome to Building Healthy Communities (BHC)! This year, your child’s school has been chosen to participate in the BHC grant, which focuses on increasing students’ healthy eating and physical activity opportunities in both the school and home environment. Since students often don’t get an adequate amount of physical activity during the school day, it is important to remind and encourage children to get active at home! Exercising helps students to stay healthy, sleep better, feel better emotionally, and avoid too much screen time. Please support what students are learning at school by offering healthy choices at home and being physically active with your children as much as possible!

As a BHC School parent, you can look forward to your child’s teacher sharing with you exclusive BHC content, including summaries of the lessons and related activities presented to your student at school, parent tip sheets, and fun, engaging at-home activities to do as a family. BHC aims to help families learn together and foster discussions surrounding healthy choices at home to create healthy habits for sustainable success in students’ health and wellness. To help facilitate this, you will find many additional resources on this page you can use at home to encourage and reinforce the health education they are receiving at school.

An easy way to stay connected with the BHC resources is to follow us on social media where we share lots of new resources regularly!

The Building Healthy Communities Program is undergoing an exciting transition within our broader school health initiative. We will not be accepting new applications for the elementary school program at this time; instead, we are expanding our impact through Building Healthy Communities: Step Up for School Wellness, a comprehensive K–12 program designed to support school-wide wellness initiatives across all grade levels.

The Building Healthy Communities: Step Up For School Wellness program builds on the success of our elementary model while offering:

Expanded grade-level inclusion (K–12)
Many additional healthy resources available for schools to select
Greater opportunities for school-wide engagement and impact

While we are no longer accepting new applications for the Elementary School Program, we are proud of the many schools and communities that have participated and will continue to support our alumni schools through ongoing access to program resources and materials on this site.

This transition reflects our continued commitment to supporting healthier school communities through innovative, scalable, and inclusive programming. We are grateful for the impact of the Elementary School Program and excited for what lies ahead with Step Up for School Wellness.

For New Schools:

If your school is interested in launching or strengthening a wellness initiative, we encourage you to apply for Step Up for School Wellness resources. This program is now the primary pathway for schools looking to join the Building Healthy Communities network.

APPLY HERE

For BHC Alumni Schools:
We remain committed to our alumni schools and invite you to continue utilizing the resources available on this website to sustain the healthy school environment you built during your year of BHC programing.

BHC alumni schools are also eligible to apply for additional support! Consider applying for Step Up for School Wellness resources related to mental health and social-emotional learning to expand or deepen your school wellness efforts.