BCBSKS Foundation - Healthy Habits for Life Grants

The Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas Foundation offers Healthy Habits for Life Grants to support schools in promoting healthy lifestyle choices for K-12 students. With a maximum grant of $2,000 per school, programs may include initiatives that reduce cardiovascular risk, increase physical activity, and reinforce positive mental health. Schools are encouraged to collaborate on unique projects, such as gardens, health fairs, and fitness activities, aiming to instill lifelong healthy habits in students.

NOTE: Completed applications must be signed by the principal.
Healthy Habits for Life is a major grant-giving program of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas Foundation for schools. It is offered to help schools fund healthy initiatives for students in kindergarten through grade 12.
The Healthy Habits for Life program is offering grants to assist schools in promoting healthy lifestyle choices to their K-12 students. School nurses, physical education teachers, principals, health or family and consumer science teachers, or other administrators are encouraged to apply for funding that they may use during 2025.
The Foundation recognizes that schools have a unique opportunity to teach students about healthy habits through curriculum and programs that reach them where they spend so much of their time: school. As a young, captive audience, students can be more easily influenced to develop life-long healthy habits and behaviors. The Foundation hopes that curbing childhood obesity and improving mental health now will translate into healthy adults later, saving health care dollars for all Kansans.
The Foundation is seeking programs that will help Kansas youth:

• Reduce their cardiovascular risk,
• Increase their physical activity,
• Learn healthy eating habits, or
• Reinforce positive mental health
• Program Ideas:

Offer Folk Dance Fridays where students learn dances to American folk songs along with a history lesson.Assemble sports and physical activity bags for students to check out on the weekends.Build an all-school garden or greenhouse, providing both nutrition education along with fresh produce.Add a DISC golf course to school grounds, or create programs for children to walk or run throughout the duration of recess.Create programs like Project Produce or Let’s Have a Taste that give students the opportunity to taste and learn about healthy foods.Educate students on health aspects of the entire body system through the Body Venture exhibit.Obtain heart rate monitors, blood pressure sensors, oxygen gas sensors and other medical equipment to measure students’ pre- and post-activity rates.Incorporate Spike Ball into the physical education curriculum, or invest in weight lifting and circuit training equipment for physical education classes.Keep students engaged by allowing older students to produce videos that offer daily healthy messages.Create a weekly walking program and invite the community to participate, or begin a daily walking program just for students before or after school.Plan a Senior Health Fair and invite people from local senior centers to interact with students.Organize healthy living family nights so students, their siblings and parents can be active together.Provide healthy breakfast and snack options.
Educate students on nutritional and healthy portion size meals through the MyPlate program.Offer oral, visual, hearing or health screenings to all students.

Eligibility

The grant is being offered in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas Foundation service area, which includes all Kansas counties except Johnson and Wyandotte.The maximum grant amount is $2,000 and grants are limited to one per school.Past grant recipients are eligible to apply again but must adequately explain how an additional grant would allow them to either expand their existing program or create a new one.

Ineligibility

Funds cannot be used for salary or wages of any staff or employee; all funds must directly benefit the needs of the program for students.The Foundation will not consider funding for:an individual’s medical care or support; religious organizations if funds are used to benefit a specific congregation however, programs sponsored by religious groups that are nonsectarian in nature may be eligible for support); parent-teacher organizations (i.e. after prom events); sponsorship of sports or athletic teams; capital or renovation campaigns; political campaigns or events, or political-related activity; and, fundraising events/sponsorships.