Monday, October 24, 2011

Center for Connected Health wins grant for student-use pedometers

By Rodney H. Brown

The Verizon Foundation has given Partners Healthcare Center for Connected Health a $25,000 grant to help middle school and high school students track their health and nutrition.

According to a release from the two organizations, the $25,000 grant will go toward supplying interested students ages 11 to 17 with a wireless pedometer that they can use to track how far they walk in a day and how much of that day they spend active. In addition, the funds will be used to support a text-messaging campaign that sends the students health and nutrition suggestions based on the data coming from the pedometers. The messages will be available in both English and Spanish, according to the release.

The Verizon Foundation has committed nearly $150,000 to the Center for Connected Health in the past four years, officials noted in the release.

Just last week the Center for Connected Health won a research grant from the San Francisco-based McKesson Foundation to create a similar text-messaging program – in that case to support the management of diabetes. The grant, which came through the Mobilizing for Health initiative of the McKesson Foundation, was for an unspecified amount.

The director of the Center for Connected Health, Joseph Kvedar, was named a Mass High Tech All Star in 2009.

The Verizon Foundation is the philanthropic arm of Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE, Nasdaq: VZ). Last year the foundation awarded nearly $67 million to nonprofit agencies in the U.S. and abroad, the release stated.