The home of jazz is the eighth location for Morgan Stanley's health and wellness initiative for children and their families.
There are few cities in the US that can match New Orleans when it comes to its wealth of food, music and culture. But in some parts of the city the quality of life, especially for children, is challenging.
“Our city is such a special place, but at the same time we consistently rank as one of the worst cities in the US for all of the socio-economic indicators," says Kelly Krupa, director of programs and services for Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans. In an effort to improve health and wellness among New Orleans children, Second Harvest is partnering with Morgan Stanley to try out the firm’s innovative health and wellness program, called Healthy Cities.
New Orleans will be the eighth location for the program, which helps local charities pool their resources at a central hub—usually a school. The idea is to give children and their families one central location to receive nutritious food, health screenings and nutritional and fitness education. Families and their kids are more likely to get holistic health and wellness support at a one-stop hub, rather than having to travel to different locations for each need.
“Our Healthy Cities model of creating hubs for essential health programming has had great success in cities around the globe and we're excited to help enhance and expand health, wellness and nutrition for children in New Orleans," says Joan Steinberg, global head of philanthropy at Morgan Stanley.
Healthy Cities programs have so far delivered over 1million meals, 4,000 medical screenings and playgrounds for more than 7,000 children.
New Orleans’ program will provide more than 600,000 healthy meals, 1,800 medical screenings, nutrition education programs and new playgrounds for kids, including a playground at Lake Forest Charter, will be provided to more than a thousand children and their families in New Orleans.
The Healthy Cities program was launched in 2014 in Chicago, Newark and Oakland, was expanded to London, Cleveland and Houston in 2015, as well as Mumbai and New Orleans this year.
