Caile Spear, professor for the School of Allied Health Sciences Department of Community and Environmental Health, has received a grant from PacificSource Foundation for Health Improvement in the amount of $23,632 to support Healthy Habits, Healthy U (HHHU). HHHU is an educational collaboration between St. Luke’s Mountain States Tumor Institute and Boise State University College of Health Sciences. The grant has been used to hire a new graduate assistant, Lynn Fyanes, who is now the program coordinator for HHHU.
The program now has 14 teaching assistants and began its third year of Boise Independent School District  instruction on September 23. The program plans to reach 900 junior high students in fall 2016 and again in spring 2017. HHHU will also be in fourth grade classrooms in ten Title I schools in spring 2017.
HHHU is a community outreach initiative involving Boise State Health Education and Promotion students designed to teach and reinforce positive habits in children. The program started in April 2013 and to date has reached more than 3,000 fourth- and eighth-grade students. The program consists of two days of lesson plans and focuses on the positive connection between increased physical activity and healthy food beverage choices with reduced cancer risks. St. Luke’s pathology lab provides cancerous and non-cancerous tissue samples for students to examine. Read more here.