Rethink Your Drink 2014 ramping up with events targeting after-school programs and non-profits throughout Illinois

CHICAGO, IL – Following a flurry of activity by health departments across the state, the Illinois Alliance to Prevent Obesity’s (IAPO) month-long Rethink Your Drink awareness campaign continues this week with non-profits raising awareness in their local communities.

IAPO non-profit partners are able to reach many different types of people – families, kids, older adults – with the Rethink Your Drink message because of the broad array of services they offer.

EverThrive Illinois, formerly the Illinois Maternal and Child Health Coalition, is integrating Rethink Your Drink messaging into the curriculum for their Cooking Matters program, which provides healthy cooking and nutrition courses that empower families to provide nutritious food at home.

The Rethink Your Drink campaign is urging people to “go on green,” drinking plenty of beverages such as water, seltzer water and skim or one-percent milk and to “stop on red” by rarely drinking (if at all) beverages such as regular sodas, energy or sports drinks and sweetened coffee or tea.

“Promoting healthy nutrition – including healthy beverages –  is a priority for the Illinois Ys, which are working in collaboration with community leaders in more than 20 communities across the state in an intentional effort to ensure that healthy living is within reach for all people living in our communities,” said Meg Cooch, Executive Director of the Illinois State Alliance of YMCAs.

The Greater Joliet Area YMCA provides one example of that work, showcasing a bulletin board in the facility’s lobby demonstrating the sugar content of certain food/drink items with sugar cubes.  Staff members reported hearing disbelief among patrons at the amount of sugar in common sports drinks.

“On an individual level, cutting down on sugary beverage consumption is one of the easiest changes a person can make to move toward improved health,” said Elissa Bassler, CEO of the Illinois Public Health Institute (IPHI), the convener of IAPO, “but this is an issue with many roots. The places we live, work and learn dramatically impact the choices we make and implementing policy-level strategies such as price disincentives, improved product placement to highlight healthy choices and public education campaigns are essential. IPHI, a non-profit, has been committed to a sugary-beverage free policy for meetings and events for some time.”

Other non-profit IAPO partners participating in Rethink Your Drink month include Healthy Schools Campaign and the genHkids coalition. The Illinois Alliance to Prevent Obesity is made up of more than 140 organizations across the state and has focused on raising awareness of the health harms of sugary beverages since 2010.

Rethink Your Drink events will continue in key sectors throughout the month, with subsequent weeks highlighting activities schools/universities, worksites and hospitals:

Health Departments/Local Government Education Week:

Monday, 1/20-Friday, 1/24

After-School Programs/Non-Profits Education Week:

Monday, 1/27-Friday, 1/31

School/ University Education Week:

Monday, 2/3-Friday, 2/7

Worksite/ Hospital/ Healthcare Education Week:

Monday, 2/10-Friday, 2/14

To learn more about the Rethink Your Drink campaign, visit IAPO’s website at www.preventobesityil.org and ‘Like’ IAPO’s Facebook Page for event updates. To learn more facts about sugary drinks, visit http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/sugary-drinks-fact-sheet/.

Read the main Rethink Your Drink press release here.

Illinois Alliance to Prevent Obesity: www.preventobesityil.org

The primary goal of the Illinois Alliance to Prevent Obesity is to ensure that trends in obesity in Illinois are stable by 2015 and moving downward by 2018.The statewide coalition of over 140 organizations works to implement solutions to the obesity epidemic through coordinated and comprehensive policy, systems, and environmental changes.

*This message was funded in part by a grant from Voices for Healthy Kids, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and American Heart Association