PROFESSOR GARFIELD FOUNDATION'S HEALTH WEB PORTAL

Our country, as well as much of the rest of the world, is facing an impending epidemic of chronic disease, much of which can be prevented. As a result of our work nationally and internationally, we have become aware of the urgent need to develop "upstream" strategies designed to enable and encourage children and youth to learn about health and healthcare issues at an early age and to facilitate the adoption of positive health behaviors.

Through our community leadership work, we were introduced to the Professor Garfield Foundation (PGF). PGF is an exciting, unique and inspired educational Internet web portal designed to complement and fill existing gaps in traditional educational curricula for kids kindergarten through 8th grade, by combining educational content from leading experts with one sassy fat cat.

The Garfield comic strip is the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world, with circulation in 2,570 newspapers in 63 countries, and a daily readership of 263 million! Today the Garfield web site has over 12 million page views and over 2 million unique visitors a month. Imagine what that branding can do in launching the Professor Garfield educational portal. We are convinced that the popularity of Garfield the Cat can be converted to Professor Garfield, and successfully leveraged as the "hook" to educate kids in this country and around the world. As such, PGF can help to create a new generation of well-informed people on health and wellness related topics. Wye River Group on Healthcare (WRGH) is pleased to have entered into a agreement with PGF to provide the content, through our allies, to create innovative and stimulating health and wellness "edutainment."

The PGF was formed in 2003 as a 501 c-3 NFP. It is designed to enhance and support classroom learning by providing children, parents, and teachers with free access to motivating messages in a fun and friendly environment. The portal will complement the web-based content with turnkey in-classroom teaching tools to ensure topics are effectively presented to the K-8 audience. Ball State University, a partner with PGF, will provide the appropriate pedagogy and assessment criteria, to assure that the content on the Professor Garfield Learning Portal is academically sound and well structured.

We will serve as the health and healthcare interface for PGF with sponsors, content experts and a recommended "youth advisory" board to develop and maintain the health portion of the site. During the first year, we plan to focus on three key areas: exercise, diet, and behavioral health issues, as well as more specific topical areas, e.g., sun safety and oral health. The content presented in each topical area will be developed working with our sponsors, with CDC and through a series of focus groups where we will seek the opinion of teachers, parents and children on what information would be most useful to them and how the information should be presented.

We are in the process of identifying financial sponsors and supporters. Strong interest has been expressed by organizations ranging from healthcare, to the food and beverage industry to governmental agencies, such as CDC.

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