Sponsored by the YEF Institute and the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) through its Leadership for Healthy Communities national program, the initiative helped each city develop and implement local wellness strategies emphasizing policy change and collaboration over single-program responses. Project cities included:

• Charleston, S.C.;
• Jackson, Tenn.;
• La Mesa, Calif.;
• Oakland, Calif.;
• San Antonio, Texas; and
• Savannah, Ga.

In Feb. 2007, the YEF Institute and AASA hosted a leadership academy in Nashville, Tenn., for 30 municipal officials and school district administrators representing 15 communities. This leadership academy focused on how cities and school districts could use federally mandated school wellness plans as the basis for citywide wellness policies to combat childhood obesity.

Following this event, the YEF Institute and AASA issued a request for proposals in April 2007 encouraging their respective members to jointly apply for an intensive, two-year technical assistance initiative designed to help cities and school districts develop and implement local wellness plans. The purpose of the project was to identify effective city-school partnership strategies for reducing and preventing childhood obesity by assisting each city-school team with the implementation of an effective community wellness strategy.

One month later, the YEF Institute and AASA competitively selected six cities for the City and School Leaders Collaborating on Local Wellness Policies project. In selecting cities, the YEF Institute and AASA evaluated applications based on several criteria, including evidence of city-school collaboration, a commitment by mayors and superintendents to reducing childhood obesity and readiness to embark upon an intensive technical assistance process. Most of the selected cities had sent city-school teams to the leadership academy to learn and discuss potential areas of collaboration in promoting healthy eating and physical activity.

As the project began, each city convened an expanded leadership team that included senior-level municipal and school district staff, as well as other community partners. At the inaugural cross-site meeting, held in Washington, D.C., in July 2007, the YEF Institute and AASA presented project teams with a framework for developing a local wellness action plan.

The YEF Institute and AASA provided assistance and facilitated regular communication through an additional cross-site meeting in Boston in Aug. 2008, site visits, bimonthly cross-site conference calls and calls with individual city teams, resource information, access to national experts, and local and national visibility.

The Institute and AASA also promote "sister-city" peer exchange by grouping Jackson and La Mesa, San Antonio and Oakland, and Charleston and Savannah. Each team visited its sister city-school site to learn more about their approaches for combating childhood obesity. Lessons learned from the experience of the project cities are documented in the YEF Institute report, Community Wellness: Comprehensive City-School Strategies for Reducing Childhood Obesity.