Leadership Reflection

In 2013, the Greater Rochester Health Foundation introduced an innovative approach that required broad cross-sectoral coordination with a centralized infrastructure, dedicated staff and a well-organized process. The idea of the Healthy Weight Leadership Council wasn’t to create a whole new initiative, but to connect and strengthen existing efforts, to drive change, and accelerate impact to reduce childhood obesity in our City.

We modeled the Healthy Weight Leadership Council after two leading communities, Chicago and its ‘Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago’s Children’ [CLOCC] and Summerville, MA and its ‘Shape Up Summerville’ Initiative. In both instances, these efforts had the direct involvement of the Mayor’s Office and leadership from all sectors – including decision-makers in government, business, nonprofits, funders, faith, and academia. Council members, much like in Summerville and Chicago,  made a multi-year commitment to create a common agenda and support aligned activities.

Through your leadership and the organizational support of The Children’s Agenda, we have much to be proud of. Over the last 3-years we have:

• Outreached to over (500) Rochester stakeholders to inform and adopt our community’s healthy weight change agenda;
• Inventoried childhood obesity prevention projects and programs in Rochester to avoid duplication and to inform strategic priorities for action;
• Determined a clear plan to attain substantive short term wins and set long term
  approaches; and
• Finalized agreement on (2) community-level changes to successfully advance in three-years.