Children in San Luis Rey Park play with a colorful parachute at a Fun on the Run Mobile Recreation event.
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The City of San Clemente, located in southern Orange County, is a small beach town (pop. 65,000) known for its surf, community programs and active living. Over the past 10 years the city has identified “pockets of poverty” with little or no access to city services, increased obesity rates and household incomes 50 percent below the median.
In response, the city’s leaders launched San Clemente’s first childhood obesity prevention program in 2007. With support from local hospitals and a community development block grant, San Clemente began operating a free mobile recreation program called Fun on the Run. This program has since expanded to offer low-cost after-school sports and scholarship-based summer swim lessons. Known collectively as Fun on the Run Fitness, these programs promote healthy activities and lifestyles by providing safe, supervised fun in strategic underserved areas of San Clemente, targeting low-income youth between the ages of 5 and 14 years. continued
The City of San Clemente won the 2013 Helen Putnam Award for Excellence in the Health and Wellness Programs category for this project. For more about the award program visit www.helenputnam.org.
www.westerncity.com
Western City, April 2014
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