Healthy Futures Challenge Keeps Kids Active

Young winner hits the slopes with prize money

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By Lacie Grosvold

Story Created: Jan 26, 2013 at 7:26 AM AKDT

Story Updated: Jan 26, 2013 at 7:39 AM AKDT

ANCHORAGE - For a kid who won the Healthy Futures Challenge, five-year-old Allison Galloway talks a lot about fast food. When asked what she was looking forward to on Friday afternoon, she said, "pizzas, French fries and going on the chair lift." She was snapping on ski boots at Birch Hill for a two-hour ski lesson after school.

Allison wasn't talking about eating. She's talking about ski lessons that she bought with prize money from winning the Healthy Futures Challenge. That's a program aimed at getting kids active. Kids track their activity with the help of their parents, and then they enter a drawing with other kids in the state who also log their activity.

It's part of an effort to battle the childhood obesity epidemic. In Alaska about 30 percent of children are obese. The number has been rising for decades, and just last year saw a slight decline.

"French fries" is how she positioned her skis to go fast... parallel down the mountain. "Pizza" is when she puts them in wedge shape to stop or turn.

Allison is one of ten thousand kids participating in the challenge, and she won for something kids like to do: being active

Her dad, Tony said for Allison, it's routine – "always being out involved in different things she's a very active little girl."
 

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TedtheBear said on Saturday, Jan 26 at 12:23 PM

Isn't stories like this so ironic? When I was a kid, my mom had to ground me to keep me from playing outdoors. Now, we got government and private programs to get kids to play outdoors. Pretty pathetic turnabout in our society today.

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