Shaping America’s Youth is a nonprofit organization steering a nationwide initiative to identify and centralize information on the widespread efforts underway throughout all sectors of American society to reverse the rapidly increasing prevalence of overweight and inactivity among children and adolescents. SAY’s mission is to assure that the voices of families and communities are integrated into local and national policy to improve the nutrition, physical activity, and health of children and youth.

Keeping with SAY’s original objectives to:

• Define the scope of our nation's effort through the creation of a national registry
• Provide universal access to cross-sector information relevant to childhood obesity
• Establish networking between programs and funding organizations
• Facilitate the transfer of useful information and foster cooperation and coordination
• Create a national dialogue 
• Convene regional covenings utilizing a 21st Century Town Meeting process
• Develop a community-based plan of action that will:
  • Establish:
    • Common language
    • Common standards
    • Common goals
  • Promote:
    • Collaborations and partnerships
    • Broad community involvement
    • Outcome measures
  • Achieve:
    • Improved nutrition and increased physical activity
    • Lower and then sustain improved BMI measures in America's youth
    • Healthier children and adolescents

SAY’s current objectives are to:

• Engage:  Involve and motivate families and communities to prevent childhood overweight/obesity at the community level.

• Partner:  Promote public/private partnerships to create a shared vision to prevent childhood overweight/obesity at the community level.

• Act:  Support scientific and community-based evidence and models to achieve effective action regarding public policy, resource allocation, best-practices identification and dissemination, and evaluation and measurement of community efforts to prevent childhood overweight/obesity at the community level.

Shaping America’s Youth conducts an ongoing survey of organizations and programs that address these health issues. The initial phase of the survey was completed in February 2004 and many programs agreed to be part of the web portal.  The survey and survey results are provided in the SAY Summary Report (pdf) and information on individual programs is accessible in a searchable database.  SAY invites all programs and funding organizations to complete the survey and join together to promote common principals and practices to provide the foundation for the development of The People's Plan.

With the support of our sponsors, the involvement of the Office of the United States Surgeon General, and national health organizations, and an expert panel of advisors, Shaping America’s Youth serves as a comprehensive source of programs, funding opportunities, meeting and event information, and resources targeting physical activity and healthy eating among children and adolescents. This information has been brought together with the goals of promoting coordination of our nation’s effort, and focusing funding, research, and interventions where they are most needed and most effective. With the creation and continued expansion of the SAY registry and its web portal as a national clearinghouse of information, SAY will drive the national dialogue through convening regional meetings. That process will have as its final objective the development of The People's Plan.

Additional information about Shaping America's Youth can be found in Frequently Asked Questions. 

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Shaping America’s Youth is a nonprofit organization.