Healthier Kids For Our Future

Overview

<p>Healthier kids can grow into healthier adults. That’s why, in our first phase, we’re focusing on fighting childhood hunger and food insecurity to help today’s kids grow into tomorrow’s healthy adults. Now in our next phase, we will work to address the greater health and well-being of children.</p> <p>Being hungry as a kid could lead to poorer health later in life. More than 1 in 6 children in the U.S. face hunger–and 1 in 9 worldwide go to bed hungry each night. Also across the world, up to 20% of children and adolescents experience mental disorders. That’s a lot of stress for our children–and our health care system. So the Cigna Foundation is stepping up, and stepping in, to help.</p> <p><strong>Our commitment</strong></p> <p>Healthier Kids For Our Future is a 5-year, $25 million global initiative brought to life by Cigna and the Cigna Foundation. We’re committed to building better communities and a healthier future–one kid at a time. In 2019, we teamed up with schools and community groups to reduce food insecurity–connecting our partners with the resources they need to solve this worldwide challenge. In 2020, we will add programming to address the mental health and emotional well-being of children, with emphasis on loneliness, anxiety, depression, and suicide.</p> <p> </p><p>At its core, Healthier Kids For Our Future is the bridge connecting community organizations and schools with the volunteers and resources necessary to make a difference. Our goal is to bring together the right people, with the right services, at the right time through our extensive volunteer network and grant program. We work with local school districts to understand the needs of their community, provide charitable partners with the tools to fulfill those needs, and mobilize Cigna’s 70,000 employees to deliver better results together–more than we ever could separately.</p> <p> </p><p><a href="https://www.cybergrants.com/cigna/healthierkidsforourfuture/index.html&…; target="_blank"><span>Food Insecurity Grants</span></a></p> <p>One of the focuses of the Healthier Kids for Our Future initiative is to address childhood hunger and improve nutrition. Research has shown that food insecurity can significantly affect a child’s short and long-term health, and may lead to poorer health outcomes later in life.</p> <p> </p><p>We want to work with organizations that are on the ground, in the communities, working to address food security throughout the world. We have learned that schools—at least in the U.S. and in many countries—are a focal point for addressing this issue and in most cases, already have programs supporting at-risk populations. With that in mind, we want to fill the gaps that exist in and outside the school environment.</p> <p> </p><p>We are looking for programs that attempt to address these, and other gaps, in delivering food and nutritional education to children. The Cigna Foundation is looking for programs that bracket or augment in-school efforts in the following areas:</p> <ol> <li><span>Community-based programs that support children and families' access to healthy meals and nutritional education outside the school setting, on weekends and during the summer</span></li> <li><span>Food and nutritional programs that provide support for expecting mothers and caregivers</span></li> <li><span>Support for programs that address the needs of pre-school children</span></li> <li><span>Health provider/clinician efforts that provide nutritional education to patients and/or food as prescription programming</span></li> <li><span>School-based programs that enhance or augment state and/or federal assistance efforts</span></li> </ol>