Prevention Matters

The Best/Worst Idea awards are a regular feature of Prevention Matters, the blog of Partnership for Prevention. Each week, Partnership for Prevention's staff will choose the designees based on nominations of items in the previous week's news submitted by members, staff and the public at large. To submit a nomination or for more information, contact Damon Thompson at dthompson@prevent.org.

BEST

Missouri’s “BackSnack” program, which provides backpacks of food to low-income children so they can avoid going hungry on weekends, is having a positive effect in the classroom. An evaluation of the program by the Midwest Center for Nonprofit Leadership found that the program is helping elementary students improve their academic performance, school attendance and behavior. the BackSnack program has grown in the last two years from providing 650 elementary students with healthy snacks to 10,000 each weekend in the Kansas City area alone.

Gun Owners of America urged the defeat of the Senate health reform bill on the basis of imaginary threats it said prevention measures would pose to the Second Amendment. In an action alert to its membership, GOA alleged that "special 'wellness and prevention' programs (inserted by Section 1001 of the bill as part of a new Section 2717 in the Public Health Services Act) would allow the government to offer lower premiums to employers who bribe their employees to live healthier lifestyles -- and nothing within the bill would prohibit rabidly anti-gun HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from decreeing that 'no guns' is somehow healthier." The White House responded that the bill specifically lists what types of programs would be involved under that section of the legislation, and that there is no mention of guns or changing premiums for gun owners.