Healthy Hoops gives North Philly kids an education in basketball and asthma

Last Tuesday afternoon, about 120 North Philly kids ages 4 to 16 gathered at the Columbia North YMCA for Healthy Hoops, a day combining basketball clinics and health education.

Healthy Hoops is an ongoing initiative from AmeriHealth Caritas and Keystone First, in which basketball is a means for educating kids about their health and encouraging them to lead active lives.

While last week’s Healthy Hoops education sessions touched on nutrition, vaping, mental health, and other health subjects, asthma was the focus. The city’s childhood asthma rate is roughly triple the national rate, and children from North Philadelphia, Nicetown, West Philadelphia, and Kingsessing have some of Philly’s highest asthma hospitalization rates, according to a previous Inquirer analysis.

» READ MORE: Bad air quality poses a particular risk to children with asthma. In unequal Philly, those kids are mostly Black and Hispanic.

“Our mission is to help people get care, stay well, and build healthy communities,” said Joanne McFall, market president of Keystone First. “Asthma is a big issue and something that we need to use every tool in the tool kit to try to connect with kids who have asthma … to help them understand that you can live a really healthy, active life as long as you have the right tools to manage your asthma.”

The Healthy Hoops kids were campers enrolled at the Columbia North YMCA’s day camp. They were divided by age group, and throughout the day they rotated through basketball drills, rap and dance performances, asthma and healthy lifestyle education and other programming designed to keep them engaged and excited.

Coach Joe Richmond led the basketball clinics in the YMCA’s gym with his booming voice and contagious energy. Richmond is the ambassador of basketball for the Delaware Blue Coats, the Sixers’ G-League affiliate team. Richmond was born and raised in South Philly, and his career in basketball has brought him around the world, including as coach of the Washington Generals, the archrival of the Harlem Globetrotters. Richmond likes to brag that he’s been to all 50 states twice.

He said he believes that basketball is a perfect mechanism to bridge connections between communities and educational programming like Healthy Hoops, especially given basketball’s strong legacy in Philadelphia.

“To see this program at the Y, it gets these kids in this community to say, ‘Yo, look at that. They came here. Somebody cares about us,’” he said.

“We’re not trying to look for the next LeBron James. … We’re not looking for the next Caitlin Clark. We’re not looking for that. We’re just looking for them to be here. … We talk about vaping, we talk about bullying, we talk about all these different things that we know these kids are gonna cope with on a daily basis. So we can come in, put a smile on their face, and just have that fun with them,” he said.

State Sen. Sharif Street stopped by Healthy Hoops and briefly spoke to some of the kids after they finished a round of basketball drills about the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle. He grew up just a couple of blocks away from the Columbia North YMCA and used to be a board member, so he was pleased to see kids at the YMCA having fun in ways that reminded him of his own youth.

“I’m 50 years old. When I was a kid, kids ran around and played, that’s what they did. A lot of times, nowadays, kids are more sedentary. And that only makes the effects of things like asthma … much more acute,” he said.

“Playing sports and being active as a part of lifestyle will allow them to be more healthy and have a more fulfilling life in every other way.”

To Street, it is meaningful to see this kind of investment in local communities, especially in oft-neglected ones like North Philly.

“When you improve young people, you’re improving the future of our communities,” he said.