Annual Report

Dear Friends and Partners,

There is nothing like a birthday to celebrate where you have been and where you are headed, and CATCH Global Foundation is no exception. Happy 10th Anniversary, CATCH Global Foundation!!

Reflecting on the past 10 years, it’s clear that the incredible 25 years of CATCH preceding the foundation laid our groundwork for success. Established in 2014, CATCH Global Foundation built on a program that – while due for some updating – enjoyed incredibly strong scientific evidence, a sterling reputation for ease of use and staying power, and unrivaled partnerships with communities, school districts, and founding universities, especially UTHealth. “Good bones” indeed!

CATCH Global Foundation grabbed the baton and hasn’t stopped running in the pursuit of healthier kids, schools, and communities. Many of our stories are recapped in the foregoing pages, including:

• The creation and viral expansion of CATCH My Breath, our evidence-based vaping prevention program, which now reaches 1.5 million youth per year and is used in 90 of the 100 largest school districts in the country. Based on our published results, we estimate that cumulatively it has prevented some 500,000 youth from initiating vaping, and has helped many youth to stop vaping as well.
• The expansion of CATCH from a nutrition and physical education program to a comprehensive health program, including social and emotional learning, which meets most national and state standards and has been adopted as the health and PE textbook by hundreds of school districts.
• The full digitization of CATCH curricular materials, expansion of professional development, and translation and adaptation of several modules for use in Latin America and Kenya. These advancements have increased our reach and usability for teachers, while lowering the cost as well. We now operate with the capabilities of a well-capitalized ed-tech concern with the heart – and pricing – of a mission-driven nonprofit.
• The growth of CATCH’s reach from approximately 600,000 to 4,300,000 students per year – a compound annual growth rate of over 20% during the 10 years of the foundation.

CATCH envisions a world where all schools embrace health as an enduring value. Looking ahead to the next 10 and 25 and 50 years, CATCH has grand plans and the team, programs, and relationships to deliver on them. We see three key areas of particular growth and promise:

• Expanding programming and materials that integrate mind, heart, and body wellness for kids. We are in the grips of a youth mental health crisis and the only viable long-term solution involves a strong dose of prevention starting at an early age. Additional mental well-being resources align well with our existing strengths in substance misuse prevention and physical activity, as those three areas are strongly interrelated.
• Leveraging our strengths in Policy, Systems, and Environment (PSE) work. CATCH’s results in improving health behaviors have always been based on helping schools create environments and infrastructures to promote health, making programs more effective and more durable.
• Extending our reach to help children in more countries of the world. We have already begun delivering CATCH programs in three vital regions – East Africa, Latin America, and India – which together have over 500 million school-age children, 10 times the number here in the US.

Each day we strive to maximize the impact, scale, and sustainability of our work, and we look forward to many more years of growth and building ahead. Thank you for being our partners in this vital mission to empower school communities to cultivate Whole Child wellness as a lever for student success and social equity.

Stay well and keep celebrating Happy Birthdays!!

Duncan Van Dusen, MPH
Founder & CEO
CATCH Global Foundation

Dear Colleagues,

It is with immense joy and heartfelt gratitude that I write to you today to celebrate the 10th anniversary of CATCH Global Foundation. Reflecting on this milestone, I am deeply moved by the journey we have undertaken together and the incredible progress we have made in promoting the health and well-being of children, schools, and communities around the world.

My journey with CATCH began in 1987 at the University of Minnesota, where I was privileged to be part of the pilot study that laid the groundwork for the CATCH Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT). I vividly remember as a student tasting food recipes, particularly the bean dishes, that were being tested for our school nutrition initiatives. Those early days were filled with excitement and discovery under the guidance of my advisor, Dr. Cheryl Perry, one of the original CATCH investigators and a leading school health researcher of that time.

In 1992, I moved to Houston to work with Dr. Guy Parcel, another founding CATCH investigator at UTHealth Houston and another luminary in school health research. From these remarkable mentors, and from other visionaries like Drs. Elaine Stone, Russell Leupker, Phil Nader, John Elder, Larry Webber, and Henry Feldman, I learned invaluable lessons about child and adolescent health. Their passion and dedication inspired me and set the stage for the incredible journey we would all embark upon with CATCH.

During the early years of the main randomized trial, I met my wife, Dr. Deanna Hoelscher, also a junior investigator on CATCH and now Dean of the UTHealth Houston School of Public Health Austin Regional Campus. We were both part of the second generation of CATCH researchers with Drs. Leslie Lytle, Voula Osganian, and Theresa Niklas. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) RCT study was successful and led to three more NIH studies to understand the program’s longer-term effects, how and why, year after year, schools continued implementing CATCH, and an epidemiological study of high school student cardiovascular disease risk factors.

In the late 1990s and 2000s, Deanna and I, with a large cast of staff and students, sought funding to disseminate CATCH in Texas and neighboring states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. CATCH also found a sales and distribution home in New Jersey at Flaghouse, Inc., with George Carmel and Kathy Chichester. During those years, Peter Cribb, Joey Walker, and Jerri Ward managed the Austin CATCH office, and with Flaghouse, they led CATCH implementation in a growing number of states (and countries) and ~50% of Texas Middle and High schools.

Meanwhile, Deanna and I continued writing CATCH grants to grow the program and sustain it. We all knew CATCH was growing too fast for university professors to adequately manage, and we began brainstorming for another organizational structure. Then, I met Duncan Van Dusen, who enrolled in the first Master of Public Health class in Austin. Duncan was a remarkable student, a successful serial entrepreneur in the tech industry, and a devoted family man who aspired to develop skills in the public sector as a public health social innovator. We became close friends, and after his graduation, we started laying plans for CATCH Global Foundation.

Soon thereafter in 2014, opportunity knocked four times with support from UTHealth Houston as the major intellectual property holder and early donor, and with major donations from MD Anderson Cancer Center, the Kozmetsky Foundation, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and numerous individual donations.

Ten years later, CATCH has grown rapidly in program offerings and geographic scope. It now provides child and family health education programs from preschool to high school in all 50 states and 35 countries with growing interest in India, Africa, and Latin America. I am honored and proud of the roles Deanna and I have played in this CATCH adventure story with so many co-investigators, students, staff, nonprofits, schools, cities, and states. It truly blends public health, implementation science, population health, and public and private funding to widely disseminate an evidence-based program.

Soon it will be up to the third generation of UTHealth CATCH research investigators working with Duncan and the CATCH team to train more graduate students, keep innovating and disseminating effective programs, and blaze new trails in the next 10 years. It’s a success story that should happen more often. In a changing public health landscape with a worldwide mental health crisis, a resurgence of infectious diseases in wealthy countries, and a ballooning chronic disease epidemic in poorer countries, CATCH is a story that must be taught, told and retold.

We are looking forward to the 10-year CATCH Global Foundation celebration!!

With heartfelt gratitude,

Dr. Steven Kelder, MPH, PhD
Distinguished Professor
UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, Austin
Founding Member CATCH Global Foundation

Deanna M. Hoelscher, PhD, RDN, LD, CNS, FISBNPA
John P McGovern Professor of Health Promotion
Regional Dean, UTHealth Houston School of Public Health, Austin
Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas System
Founder and Director of Michael and Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living
CATCH Senior Investigator