The Community YMCA of Red Bank will take part in Healthy Kids Day on April 21 in recognition of the nationwide effort to encourage children to lead healthy lives.
The free event, which takes place from 1 to 3 p.m., will be held at 166 Maple St.
Celebrated at more than 1,500 YMCA’s across the country, more than 1.2 million children annually participate in Healthy Kids Day, according to the community organization.
“The Y’s Annual Healthy Kids Day aims to encourage healthy habits for families and inspire kids to keep their minds and bodies active now and all summer long. When kids are out of school, they are prone to gain weight and fall behind academically,” said Teicia Gaupp, director of marketing and social media for the Community YMCA.
According to the non-profit organization, Healthy Kids Day began in 1992 as an initiative to abolish the stigma associated with children having too much “idle” time during the summer.
“Learning habits, like eating healthy and maintaining physical activity, helps to reduce the chance of developing diseases, like diabetes,” Gaupp said.
Terrell Wilson, associate membership director at the CYMCA of Red Bank, reiterated the importance of learning healthy habits from a young age, so an individual won’t have the face health problems later in life.
Wilson said he runs the Diabetes Prevention Program at the CYMCA, an initiative aimed towards changing the lifestyles of older adults who are pre-diabetic. Through this program, Wilson realized the correlation between health education and its impression upon youth is critical.
“Most of the participants in DPP are 60 and over. Now, here you’re talking about a lifetime of habits that they are just trying to change now. So if they had this information earlier in their lives, they would have been able to curb pre-diabetes before it even happened,” Wilson said.
In order for kids to deter what Gaupp refers to as “the summer slide,” children will participate in physically and mentally stimulating activities that outline the summer programs the YMCA offers.
According to Wilson, New Jersey continues to tackle an ongoing childhood obesity issue.
“I think that one of the important things to do is to curb that by teaching kids how to maintain healthy lifestyles. This is done through a balance of eating correctly and having the correct amount of activity in a day. It’s important to begin healthy habits at a young age so that when the kids do get older, they have those habits already instilled in them,” Wilson said.
Wilson mentioned Healthy Kids Day is just another way the organization can instill healthy habits upon youth.
“Learn the balance, maintain that balance and you’ll live a healthy life,” Wilson said.
