Team Priority Health

This year, Priority Health challenged 4th grade students from 38 elementary schools in Northern Michigan to come up with ideas of how to make being healthy easier for their classmates.  More than 130 students across Michigan wrote letters to the Team with ideas on how they could be more active and eat healthier.

Priority Health chose five lucky winners.  Each winner received a healthy party for their class with a visit from one of the Priority Health Cyclists and $1,000 for their gym program. 

Priority Health also received a tremendous response from the winning schools and their faculty.  They were really excited to have the Cyclists serve as healthy role models for the students and to have the extra funds for their gym programs.

Here is a list of this year’s winners and a sample from their letters:

	Lyric Antio - Woodland Elementary School in Traverse City "If you’re not sure how to be active all you need to do is have a schedule, like play baseball for at least 15 minutes on a sunny day or ride your bike every chance you get.  If you eat fast food every day, you can stop gradually.  Every time you get hungry and start to think about fast food, either busy yourself by doing something else or simply get something healthy to eat."
	Morgan Culp - Willow Hill Elementary School in Traverse City "To make healthy food more fun, you could cut cantaloupe into cubes and eat it with a toothpick.  Carrots are fun to eat when you can dip them into Ranch dressing.  Kids can also put fruit into their cereals.  If you are a pop lover, you can try a fruit smoothie and drink that instead of pop."
	Kimberly Lewis - Boyne City Elementary School in Boyne City "To be active I think that we should have Fun Exercise Friday, Workout Wednesday and Teamwork Tuesday.  On Friday we could have hula hoops, jump ropes and climbing ropes.  Then on Tuesday we will have three leg races, egg toss, basketball and soccer and for Wednesday we would have a bouflex, a cruncher and a bunch more.  But for the rest of the week will get to do what we want out of them all."
	Emelia Watkins - Concord Academy in Mancelona "Do you want to be healthy?  Then you should start by reading this.  Our class thought we should have a healthy vending machine.  You could also put up posters of the food groups.  You could also sell 100% fruit juice instead of root beer floats, cake or cookies."
	Ivy Trafatter - Kenwood School in Cadillac "I have a few ideas for our schools to be healthier.  Maybe they could put more good food that is good for you in the school cafeterias.  If people would put up more sign up sheets, that makes your body healthy like Girls on the Run or hockey, people would like exercising and they would get more involved to doing it every day.  When we have a free chance maybe we could make posters to put around the school, to make healthy choices."

Congratulations to all of the winners.