Best and Promising Practices Guide

Promoting Healthy Eating & Physical Activity in Out of School Programs

NHPS developed this guide to help directors and staff of out-of-school time programs offer activities and education, and create healthy environments that help prevent obesity.

Obesity has been recognized as a national concern, given that about one-third of children and two-thirds of adults in America are overweight. In Delaware, over 37% of children are overweight or obese and at high risk for developing health problems like heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases.

Contributing Factors

Many factors contribute to the obesity epidemic, including: energy imbalance, environment, genetics, metabolism, culture and behavior. Behavior and environment have the largest effect on obesity and provide the best opportunity for prevention. You can help the children in your out-of-school programs adopt a healthier lifestyle by teaching them about healthy behaviors and providing them the chance to practice those behaviors.

Targeted Behaviors

NHPS targets specific behaviors for obesity prevention, described in our formula for a healthy lifestyle, 5-2-1-Almost None:

• Eat five or more servings of fruits and vegetables daily
• Spend less than two hours per day in front of a screen
• Get at least one hour of physical activity per day
• Drink almost no sugary beverages  

Best and Promising Practices

This guide contains best and promising practice programs that address these behaviors, as well as environmental elements affecting childhood obesity. It describes each program in detail including intended audience, cost and ordering information. Many of these approaches have been studied and found to be effective.

NHPS has also included other strategies based on sound theory and science, but not yet evaluated through research. Because there is still much work to do in learning which approaches are effective in increasing healthy behaviors and creating healthy environments, NHPS expects this to be an ever-changing collection of tools.

As more out-of-school programs adopt these strategies and develop other innovative strategies to promote healthy environments and behaviors, NHPS will continue to refine and improve this guide.