Jenny Bogard Discusses the Goals of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation

The Alliance for a Healthier Generation believes in giving the youth the chance to live a healthier life and will continue to create healthier options at schools despite the current administration’s restriction reductions, claims Jenny Bogard, MPH, director of healthcare strategies at the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What is the goal of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, and how do you go about reaching that goal?

The goal of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation is that we really believe that all young people deserve a chance to live a healthier life and we believe that the healthy choice should be the easy choice, or at least the default choice. Unfortunately, that’s not really the case right now, and we know that a lot of youth don’t have options, and we know that having healthy options requires privilege and resources, and that shouldn’t be the case.

What do you think the impact will be of the Trump administration’s recent decision to reduce school lunch restrictions?

The Alliance for a Healthier Generation does not have an official statement. However, I can tell you that we are going to continue to work in the 35,000 schools that we work with to ensure that they promote healthier environments. We know that we’ve seen it first hand that many of the 35,000 schools are meeting these requirements already, they were already meeting it before it was a rule.

We don’t think that the current administration relaxing on the rules is actually going to have an impact on all of the schools that we work with. We are going to continue to do this, we know this is right, we know that children deserve to have healthier options at school. We also recognize that a lot of low income kids only eat food at school throughout the day, so we have to ensure that they have healthier options moving on.