The Healthy Lifestyles for Children Program aims to establish a healthy caloric balance in early childhood (age 2-7). This early intervention paradigm is favored based on a hypothesis that metabolic rate setting may occur early in life, and may, if suppressed, predispose an individual for adult obesity and its serious health consequences.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) studied, in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Wake Forrest University School of Medicine and the American Dietetic Association, the efficacy of parent health education through a process referred to as "motivational interviewing," conducted during scheduled visits to the pediatrician's office. The project was designed as a small scale non-blinded clinical trial, with two intervention groups (high and moderate), and a control group of equal size.

A three-year grant of $350,000 supported the training of participating pediatricians and dieticians in motivational interviewing. The study evaluated the effectiveness of parental motivational engagement and training by both pediatricians and dieticians (high intensity intervention), pediatrician only (moderate), and neither (control) in maintaining a healthy Body Mass Index and nutritional/exercise practices in the young children.

In 2002, a Foundation grant helped fund, in part, a training program for promotoras de salud (literally promoters of health) in Texas on diabetes self-management. After two years of funding, it was hoped that this model for private/public partnerships would be used in other parts of the country with large Latina populations. Training was provided to promotoras with the information they need to work on teams with nurses and physicians in local community centers. Eventually, these health workers were expected to move out from the centers into poor Hispanic communities near the Mexican-U.S. border where diabetes has reached epidemic proportions. The project fielded 77 separate teams of physicians and promotoras to teach the Hispanic population about proper exercise, diet, use of medications and management of complications. Each team was based in one of eight participating clinics, providing comprehensive diabetes care for 300 patients a year. The project built capacity to serve 21,000 patients.