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Senator Harkin's HeLP (Healthy Lifestyles and Prevention) America Act

Title I. Healthier Kids and Schools

  • Fruit and Vegetable Program: Expands the Harkin Fruit and Vegetable Program to more schools and creates healthy cooking demonstrations.

  • School Wellness Policy: Requires schools to formulate wellness policies that include goals for nutrition education and physical activity.

  • Competitive Foods in Schools: Restores authority of the Secretary of Agriculture to regulate the sale of junk foods in schools.

  • Healthy School and Child Care Nutrition Environment Incentive Grants: Competitive grants to schools and child care centers to create healthy school environments.

  • Mental Health Services in Schools: Grant program to provide mental health screenings and mental illness prevention programs at schools.

Title II. Healthier Communities and Workplaces

  • Healthy Workforce: Provides tax credits to businesses that offer comprehensive programs to promote employee health; also grants for small businesses.

  • Healthy Community Grants: Grants to communities to establish coordinated chronic disease prevention programs.

  • Working Well and Living Well with a Disability: Grant program to facilitate healthier lifestyles for individuals with disabilities.

  • Complete Streets to Promote Pedestrian Safety and Physical Activity State Incentive program: Encourages new road construction or reconstruction that accommodates bicycles and pedestrians.

  • Mental Health Surveillance: SAMHSA will enhance existing public health surveillance systems to include data on mental and behavioral health status and risks.

  • FDA regulation: FDA authority to regulate tobacco to protect public health.

Title III. Responsible Marketing and Consumer Awareness

  • Restaurant Labeling: Requires nutritional information on menus of chain restaurants.

  • Protect Kids from Unfair Junk Food Advertising: Restores the rulemaking authority of the Federal Trade Commission to issue restrictions on advertising with respect to children.

  • Food Advertising in Schools: Gives Secretary of Agriculture authority to prohibit the marketing and advertising of food in schools participating in the School Lunch or Breakfast programs.

  • Tobacco Marketing: Eliminates tax deductibility of tobacco advertising, and funds counter-advertising.

Title V. National Health Promotion Trust Fund

  • Creates a trust fund through tax offset to pay for new programs while expanding funding for existing prevention programs such as PEP and the CDC Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity Grant Program.

Title VI. Research

  • Expansion of Research Regarding Obesity: Expand on the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force on Obesity conclusions to conduct and expand research on obesity prevention, treatment, and control in the primary-care setting with various populations utilizing nutrition and physical activity counseling.


More information on the HeLP America Act of 2004

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