Norman Mayor Cindy Rosenthal led Norman residents on a 5k walk Saturday morning to kickoff the “Heart and Sole” campaign for family fitness.

The event began around 9 a.m. outside the Cleveland County YMCA. Over 150 people attended the kickoff, which included free smoothies, Jazzercise and obstacle courses for children.

The six-week “Heart and Sole” campaign is a walking program initiated by the Healthy Community Coalition and Norman Regional Hospital.

Rosenthal said this year’s program emphasizes getting children involved in physical activity with their parents.

“After the International Walk to School Day we decided to add the children’s component,” she said. “We really wanted to focus on the issue of childhood obesity.”

Kathey Drummond, vice president of development and community for Norman Regional Hospital, said she encourages Norman residents to take an active role in their health.

“It’s not just Norman alone, our society is gaining weight,” she said. “We want our children to be healthy because they’ll be the ones taking care of us when we’re older.”

The program has set a goal of 300 million total steps for children and adults. Participants can track their progress with pedometers and walking logs, and post their step count to the Healthy Community Coalition Web site.

Lindy Beswick, coordinator of community health for Norman Regional Hospital, said the step goal for this year was increased from previous totals.

“Last campaign we reached about 294 million steps and we wanted to improve on that,” Beswick said. “The total of 300 million is about seven times around the earth.”

Beswick said prizes would be awarded to walkers based on their final step totals.

“We had people who had over 2 million steps last year,” she said. “The prizes depend on the distance.”

The program has over 900 prizes including shirts, radios, water bottles and backpacks.