About the Play Every Day Campaign

For the past 10 years, Play Every Day has been an ongoing public health education campaign to help Alaska children grow up at a healthy weight.

About 1 out of 3 Alaska children has overweight or obese. Children who grow up at an unhealthy weight often become adults who have unhealthy weights. Today, 2 out of 3 Alaska adults have overweight or obesity. This is concerning because having an unhealthy weight increases your chances of developing serious diseases that can last a lifetime — including type 2 diabetes, heart disease and more than a dozen types of cancer. These are no longer just diseases that start in adulthood. Children growing up at an unhealthy weight are developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol at young ages.

Play Every Day is run through the Alaska Physical Activity and Nutrition program. Since 2012, the campaign’s staff have been sharing messages with families across Alaska to encourage parents to support their children in getting daily physical activity and to serve healthy drinks like water or milk instead of sugary drinks. Play Every Day reaches families wherever they are: in schools, preschools, child care centers, doctors and dentists offices, and more. The campaign shares its messages through videos, online and print materials, and social media.

The Play Every Day staff follow a set of best practices from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make sure their messages are meaningful and motivating, that Alaska parents are seeing and hearing the messages, and they are seeing them often. Before creating videos and related materials, Play Every Day staff talk with parents in communities across Alaska to learn what they know and believe, and what actions they take. The campaign’s staff then test possible messages with parents to ensure the campaign makes materials that support positive changes and can help parents learn more about the importance of healthy drinks and physical activity. Staff repeatedly evaluate messages to make sure they’re reaching families, improving knowledge, and changing attitudes and actions related to maintaining a healthy weight.

The campaign’s staff work with many partners to reach families across the state. Those include schools and preschools, health care providers, tribal organizations like the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, and nonprofit organizations like the Healthy Futures program. Healthy Futures runs a free, school-based physical activity challenge for elementary school-age children in Alaska.

Please join us in encouraging Alaska’s kids to be as healthy as possible. Get out and play, every day.

For more information, contact:

Ann Potempa, Play Every Day Coordinator
(907) 744-0474
ann.potempa@alaska.gov

Katie Reilly, Physical Activity and Nutrition Program Manager
(907) 269-3457
katie.reilly@alaska.gov

Sonya Senkowsky, Information Officer
(907) 269-4541
sonya.senkowsky@alaska.gov