Partnerships

Kohl's Healthy Choices for Healthy Families

In an effort to stem the rise in childhood obesity, Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital has partnered with Kohl's Department Store to create Kohl's Healthy Choices for Healthy Families.

Kohl's Department Store, through the Kohl's Cares for Kids® program, has provided more than $530,000 to Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital since 2006 to educate youth and families about the importance of eating healthy and engaging in regular physical activity.

The Kohl’s Healthy Choices for Healthy Families program is a year-round education and awareness initiative, designed to teach youth and their families about energy balance – a simple process of how our bodies use food for fuel and burn it off – and strategies for achieving energy balance every day.

Through after-school programming, children receive hands-on, interactive lessons about portion size, physical activity, reducing screen time, starting the day with a healthy breakfast, making better beverage choices, and eating fruits and vegetables. The program helps parents to change the home environment and reinforce children’s healthy eating and active living behaviors with free online resources including portion size guides, dining out tips, healthy family snack and meal recipes, and trackers that can be used to set family goals around nutrition and physical activity.

In addition to the seven-week after-school program, Kohl’s Healthy Choices for Healthy Families also provides for community outreach including participation in family-focused events, a print and web campaign with Central Penn Parent magazine, and television spots airing on the local ABC and NBC affiliates.

Hershey Center for Applied Research

As a Wexford Science and Technology property, the Hershey Center for Applied Research is part of a thriving network with connections to some of the country’s most respected research institutions.

Our strategic partnership with Penn State University and the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center offers domestic and foreign-based tenants access to advanced technology and other research resources, and immerses them in a climate of innovation.

With an ideal east-coast location convenient to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C., Hershey is an emerging research hot spot that offers a high quality of life and access to a well-educated and stable workforce. By leasing fully customizable research, manufacturing and office space while also providing integrated strategic business services tailored to each tenant, HCAR helps early stage to mature life sciences, nanotech and clean tech companies innovate and grow.

Lion Care Clinic

A year-round free clinic, funded, organized, and run by College of Medicine students and residents is a tribute to the humanism emphasized at the College of Medicine. Currently conducted at the Bethesda Mission on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the Lion Care Clinic treats residents of the shelter and others who have come to depend on the services provided. They are helped by Edward Bollard, M.D.,’93 MED who serves as director. Students provide physical examinations, take medical histories, offer health screenings for women—all with a physician volunteer on board to approve student diagnoses and recommendations.

The stories of patients having serious disorders detected and treated are numerous. Last summer, an unemployed man walked into the clinic complaining of poor vision.

A student at the clinic met with the man, and glaucoma was diagnosed. An ophthalmologist who provided treatment free of charge determined the patient would have been blind in three months. Instead, he was given free medication and appointments for follow-up care. After a few months, his condition had improved immeasurably.

The Lion Care Clinic is conducted with a $10,000 annual operating budget, primarily funded by Penn State University and philanthropy.  A recent $20,000 grant from the Association of American Medical Colleges is designated toward outfitting new space with furnishings and equipment, necessary as the result of the Bethesda Mission's planned relocation to new quarters.