Evaluation

Each of the three Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation focus areas—the marketplace, the workplace and schools—will be assessed by independent evaluators.

The National Business Group on Health will create a set of standardized metrics for the workplace that will allow us to measure our ability to: foster and maintain a healthy culture, offer the best range and type of resources and tools feasible in a particular environment, and gain significant levels of employee participation and satisfaction. Best practices will be shared with other employers so they may be replicated.

The Partnership for a Healthier America will track the progress of the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation’s pledge to reduce annual calories by 1.5 trillion by the end of 2015. Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation manufacturing companies will pursue the calorie reduction goal in the marketplace by developing and introducing lower-calorie options, changing recipes to lower the calorie content of current products, or reducing portion sizes of existing single-serve products.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) will support an independent evaluation of HWCF activities in the marketplace. RWJF will fund an independent group of scientists to define metrics that will be used to track progress and assess the overall impact of the marketplace effort. The resulting evaluation reports will be released publicly.

The University of California, Berkeley Center for Weight and Health will evaluate the progress of the Healthy Schools Partnership in its prototype communities over a three-year period. Progress will be measured by student knowledge, attitudes and behavior regarding energy balance, impact of the program on fitness scores and BMI numbers, improved food choice behavior, and increased physical activity.