Healthy Weight for Healthy Alaska Kids
A lifetime of good health starts when we're young
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Overview
Helping kids grow into healthy adults starts with building healthy habits when they are young. Parents can set their kids up for good health — and prevent many diseases — by helping them grow up at a healthy weight.
We created Play Every Day to help more children grow up healthy and strong. Today, too many Alaska kids are growing up at an unhealthy weight.
- About 1 in 3 Alaska children (33%) is growing up with overweight or obesity.
- More than 2 in 3 Alaska adults (69%) have overweight or obesity.
- Being above a healthy weight increases chances of developing weight-related chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and more than 12 types of cancer.
These are no longer diseases only adults get. Young children growing up at an unhealthy weight are developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol. They also can experience anxiety, depression, lower self-esteem, or social problems like bullying.
Play Every Day promotes two actions to help kids grow up at a healthy weight:
- Get daily activity. Or in the words of the campaign, get out and play, every day.
- Choose healthy drinks and foods without added sugar. That means water or plain milk.
Less sugar
Alaska parents are serving their children fewer sugary drinks than in the past. But there are still areas for improvement.
Play Every Day supports three goals that are part of the state's health improvement plan, Healthy Alaskans 2030: increase the portion of school age children who are growing up at a healthy weight, reduce how many 3-year-olds drink sugary beverages dailycompared to how many are not, and increase the portion of Alaska's youth doing 60 minutes of physical activity every day.
- Among Alaska's 3-year-olds, the percentage drinking any sugary beverages on a given day dropped from 31% in 2018 to 24% in 2022. This is almost a quarter of preschoolers drinking some sugary beverages every day.
- By the time kids get to high school, more than half (53%) drink one or more sugary beverages every day. Only 18% meet the physical activity recommendation of 60 minutes every day.
Active students
Play Every Day’s work with the nonprofit Healthy Futures program has made it possible for more students to be active through the Healthy Futures Challenge.
Elementary schools across the state can join for free. Thousands of kids and their families have been staying active through this challenge for more than 20 years in Alaska.
Play Every Day and its partners want every Alaska child to have the opportunity to grow up at a healthy weight, free from weight-related diseases that can be prevented. Visit the Physical Activity and Nutrition webpage to learn more about the State of Alaska’s efforts to improve physical activity and nutrition for all Alaskans.
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