Healthy Body HEROES
Do Good, Feel Amazing Oz-inspired teens and mentors are paying their health lessons forward—to their families, siblings, and peers at school—and changing lives across America. Yours could be one of them. BY KIM TRANELL
Max (left) showed Ramon that eating right helps his baseball and his focus.
Fifteen years ago, Dr. Oz walked into an auditorium to speak to high school students about the human body, using real organs to get them engaged. The next morning, he received an avalanche of questions—from parents. The students had shared their new wisdom. It made Dr. Oz realize something powerful: that kids could be the agents of change and help tackle health crises like obesity. Enter HealthCorps, which Dr. Oz founded with his wife, Lisa, in 2003. Based on the Peace Corps model, the organization recruits and trains recent college graduates to serve as mentors at high schools from coast to coast. They each make a two-year commitment to teach teens that by eating differently, moving a little more, and developing mental resilience, they can change their entire health destiny. The results are exciting. Students who participated were 36% more likely to report an increase in physical activity (says research published in Childhood Obesity) and also felt happier. (In one study, 69% reported better self-esteem.) The program has reached more than 550,000 teens and is growing with the help of the CK-12 Foundation, a nonprofit that offers free digital educational resources to classrooms worldwide. That activism thing is happening too: Students are leading lunchtime hummus taste tests and school-wide danceoffs. They’re tossing more veggies into the family shopping cart and getting their folks off the couch for evening walks. They’re changing waistlines, habits, and hopes. Want to join them? Follow that teen!
He Inspired His Whole Family At just 16, Ramon Chicas walked away from a routine doctor’s visit with a devastating diagnosis: He had high blood pressure and was dangerously close to developing type
DECEMBER 2015
B U F F ST R I C K L A N D. O P P O S I T E PAG E : C O U RT E S Y O F S U B J E C T
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