Special Olympics Arizona’s (SOAz) has been a core partner for improving the health of folks with disabilities in Arizona for a long time. They’ll have an opportunity to take their mission even further as a result of our new partnership between Special Olympics and our Office for Children with Special Health Care Needs to better integrate kids with special health care needs and developmental disabilities into community based sports and recreational and wellness activities like nutrition, physical activity, injury prevention and health advocacy. The initiative tackles and nicely integrates our Winnable Battle of promoting nutrition and physical activity, and the Title V priority of promoting inclusion of children with special health care needs in all aspects of life.
The new grant award will fund Special Olympics Arizona’s (SOAz) about $440K to execute an evidence-based program called Healthy LEAP (Lifestyle, Education and Practice). It’s a nationally recognized Health Promotion curriculum that focuses on nutrition, physical activity, injury prevention and health advocacy. The new contract builds on the existing capacity of Special Olympics to provide quality physical activity and healthy lifestyle activities for children with cognitive impairment and expand their capacity for collecting and reporting data regarding participant outcomes. Nice leverage point… congratulations!
