WellPoint Foundation Awards New Grant to Boys & Girls Clubs in West Virginia

Grant provides $5,000 of funding for Triple Play healthy lifestyles program

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Nov 17, 2014, 09:30 ET

CHARLESTON, W. Va., Nov. 17, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Boys & Girls Clubs of America announced today WellPoint Foundation will award a new Triple Play grant to Boys & Girls Club of the Eastern Panhandle in West Virginia to improve the health and wellness of kids in the state. Thanks to the generous support of partners like WellPoint Foundation, the Triple Play program in Boys & Girls Clubs in West Virginia helped nearly 1,000 youth engage in regular physical activity last year.

The grants help provide programming during out-of-school time that supports a healthy, active lifestyle. Boys & Girls Clubs around the state will receive a variety of grants to support Triple Play programming, focusing on being healthy holistically through the mind, body and soul.

WellPoint Foundation will be issuing a Mind, Body and Soul grant to Boys & Girls Club of the Eastern Panhandle, Martinsburg-Berkeley County Club to implement the Triple Play program for the first time.

"Many kids today are facing an uphill battle when it comes to eating right and understanding how to maintain healthy habits," said Tadd Haynes, Director of Operations for the UniCare Health Plan. "The Triple Play program and Boys & Girls Clubs are working to educate and help make healthy choices easier for kids. Through the program we are building a solid foundation of learning with activities that will help kids continue healthy habits and exercise into their adult lives."

As Boys & Girls Clubs of America's proven health and wellness program, Triple Play is a game plan for the mind, body and soul. Supported by founding sponsor The Coca-Cola Company and co-sponsor, WellPoint Foundation, the program's three components encourage Club members to eat healthier (mind), become more physically active (body) and increase their ability to engage in healthy relationships (soul). Since the program's inception in 2005, Triple Play has made 9.2 million connections with kids.

"Triple Play continues to be one of the most utilized programs in Boys & Girls Clubs around the country – changing the opportunity equation for kid's health today," said Wayne B. Moss, BGCA's senior director of healthy lifestyles. "Without the support of our partners like WellPoint Foundation, we would not be able to impact so many kids each year. Triple Play provides much needed healthy lifestyles programming to kids who need it most, creating a positive foundation for them to grow and thrive as healthy, responsible adults."

WellPoint Foundation is committed to improving health and strengthening West Virginia communities. Through its Healthy Generations grant program, WellPoint Foundation works to identify the issues most in need of attention and then directs its financial support and volunteer efforts toward improving health in those areas. Promoting youth health and active lifestyles is an ongoing focus of the foundation.

The Triple Play grants announced today are part of a five-year, $10 million commitment from WellPoint Foundation's parent company foundation to Boys & Girls Clubs of America to promote healthy lifestyles.

About Triple Play
Triple Play: A healthy lifestyles Game Plan for the Mind, Body and Soul, was launched in 2005 by Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) in collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services and with support from The Coca-Cola Company. The goal of Triple Play is to encourage kids to eat healthier, become more physically active and increase their ability to engage in healthy relationships. A two-year study of more than 2,000 children ages 9-14 showed that Triple Play succeeded in getting them to exercise more, eat healthier foods and feel better about themselves. The study found that Triple Play kids increased to 90 percent of the federally recommended amount of daily exercise, which is 60 minutes a day for children, while their peers outside the program decreased to 78 percent. Triple Play includes five program components, each of which serves between 20,000 and 500,000 youth annually. Since its inception in 2005, Triple Play has made more than 9.2 million connections with kids across the country. In 2011, the WellPoint Foundation joined BGCA and Coca-Cola as a Triple Play sponsor. Learn more about the program at www.bgca.org/tripleplay.

About Boys & Girls Clubs of America
For more than 100 years, Boys & Girls Clubs of America (GreatFutures.org) has enabled young people most in need to achieve great futures as productive, caring, responsible citizens. Today, more than 4,100 Clubs serve nearly 4 million young people annually through Club membership and community outreach. Clubs are located in cities, towns, public housing and on Native lands throughout the country, and serve military families in BGCA-affiliated Youth Centers on U.S. military installations worldwide. They provide a safe place, caring adult mentors, fun, friendship, and high-impact youth development programs on a daily basis during critical non-school hours. Priority programs emphasize academic success, good character and citizenship, and healthy lifestyles. In a Harris Survey of alumni, 57 percent said the Club saved their lives. National headquarters are located in Atlanta. Learn more at http://www.bgca.org/facebook and http://bgca.org/twitter.

About WellPoint Foundation
The WellPoint Foundation is the philanthropic arm of WellPoint, Inc. and through charitable contributions and programs, the Foundation promotes the inherent commitment of WellPoint, Inc. to enhance the health and well-being of individuals and families in communities that WellPoint, Inc. and its affiliated health plans serve. The Foundation focuses its funding on strategic initiatives that address and provide innovative solutions to health care challenges, as well as promoting the Healthy Generations Program, a multi-generational initiative that targets specific disease states and medical conditions. These disease states and medical conditions include: prenatal care in the first trimester, low birth weight babies, cardiac morbidity rates, long term activities that decrease obesity and increase physical activity, diabetes prevalence in adult populations, adult pneumococcal and influenza vaccinations and smoking cessation. The Foundation also coordinates the company's year-round Associate Giving program which provides a 50 percent match of associates' campaign pledges, as well as its Volunteer Time Off and Dollars for Doers community service programs. To learn more about the WellPoint Foundation, please visit www.wellpointfoundation.org and its blog at http://wellpointfoundation.tumblr.com.

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SOURCE Boys & Girls Clubs of America