Sussex Child Health Promotion Coalition

Overview

Nemours Health and Prevention Services (NHPS) is committed to helping health and human service organizations in Delaware achieve excellence in child health programming. We believe that sound program planning and evaluation, as well as collaboration, are essential to achieving this goal.

Toward that end, NHPS sponsored the Sussex County Child Health Promotion Collaborative in 2005 to bring the community together in a common effort to advance child health programming and promote childhood healthy eating and physical activity in Sussex County. Following the Collaborative, NHPS hosted two partner workshops in 2006 to explore the possibility of establishing a child health promotion coalition in Sussex.

These events led to the formation of the Sussex Child Health Promotion Coalition, which is comprised of members representing child and youth advocates, schools, higher education institutions, businesses, government agencies, healthcare organizations and the media. The coalition exists to engage the entire community in collaborative, family-focused efforts to improve the health of children.  The coalition and its members are engaged in spreading the 5-2-1-Almost None message among children and families in Sussex County to generate excitement around healthy eating and physical activity.

Historical Archive

We present this historical archive of the Collaborative, providing information on its mission, goals, objectives, and activities. The presentations and other informational materials used during the Collaborative are provided as a resource for community-based organizations and coalitions focused on child health promotion. To learn more about the Collaborative, read below.

Collaborative Mission

The mission of the NHPS Sussex County Child Health Promotion Collaborative was to promote excellence in planning and evaluation. The Collaborative employed a combination of training, technical assistance, shared learning, and web-based support to help participants expand their expertise in program design and evaluation for community health improvement.

Collaborative Goals

The goals of the NHPS Sussex County Child Health Promotion Collaborative were to:

• Build the capacity of organizations to plan, implement, and evaluate effective programs
• Foster collaboration among organizations and within the community as a whole
• Foster the establishment of a sustainable community coalition to promote child health
• Engage youth in health promotion

As sponsor of the Collaborative, NHPS provided the following services to assist the collaborating organizations in achieving common objectives:

• Training in program planning, program evaluation, and organizational leadership
• Direct technical assistance with program planning and evaluation
• Continuing opportunities for members to share their knowledge and expertise
• Web-based resources to support all of the above

Collaborative Activities

The Collaborative included a pre-work period followed by learning sessions and action periods. Participants took part in:

• Five one-day learning sessions, during which they learned the core course material
• Four action periods of several weeks’ duration, when they applied what they had learned with the aid of direct, web-based technical assistance from Collaborative faculty
• A graduation celebration, at which they presented their program design and evaluation plans as products of the Collaborative

Collaborative Faculty

The following NHPS associates and other experts served as faculty for the Sussex County Child Health Promotion Collaborative:

• Stephen Horan, Ph.D.
• Gwendoline B. Angalet, Ph.D.
• Will Henry, MBA
• Mary M. Trotter, MS,RD
• Nancy Schaff
• Tara Maloney

Collaborative Resources

Presentations, planning guides, and other informational materials pertaining to child health, youth development, program planning, program evaluation, leadership, and other resources, that were utilized during the Sussex County Health Promotion Collaborative are available here.