NHPS Fact Sheet

Nemours Health & Prevention Services (NHPS), a nonprofit organization based in Newark, Delaware, works with families and community partners to help children grow up healthy. Our goal is to effect long-term changes in the policies and practices that promote child health and to leverage community strengths and resources to have the greatest impact on the most children.

Mission

Our mission is to help children lead healthier lives by:

• working hand in hand with Delaware communities to emphasize child health promotion in all the places where children live, learn, and grow
• supporting the implementation of health promotion policies and practices, and then evaluating them to see how they’re working
• sharing findings and contributing to the knowledge base in the field of child health promotion and disease prevention
• advocating for social, environmental, and behavioral changes that will lead to generations of healthier children

Who We Are

NHPS is a division of Nemours, a nonprofit organization dedicated to children’s health and health care. Nemours operates the Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware, as well as outpatient facilities in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Florida. NHPS complements Nemours’ tradition of pediatric care, research, and training by promoting the health of the whole child within his or her family and community.

At NHPS, we see our role as “catalyst,” planting the seeds for better health working with community partners to reach children in a variety of settings. Childhood nutrition, physical activity, obesity prevention, and emotional/behavioral health are the division’s primary focus areas.

What We Do

The primary goal of NHPS is to bring about societal change in which people place high value on child health and wellness. NHPS emphasizes working with and through its community-based partners to reach the most children and have the greatest impact. We seek to leverage resources and apply evidence-based knowledge and skills – in other words, “best practices” – that have been proven promising or effective through evaluation.

One of our initial areas of emphasis is childhood obesity prevention through the promotion of healthy lifestyles. The centerpiece of this endeavor is the 5-2-1-Almost None campaign. This “formula for a healthy lifestyle” encourages eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, watching two or fewer hours of screen time a day, getting one or more hours of physical activity a day, and drinking almost no sugary beverages. Using a holistic approach to the child’s world, NHPS considers the many different places where children and families spend their time:

• Schools - In the school setting, NHPS works with teams of administrators, teachers, counselors, school nurses, parents, and even the students themselves to encourage healthier eating and more physical activity through better training and education, as well as through policy and environmental changes. 
• Child Care - In the child-care setting, NHPS provides training and educational tools to help child-care providers promote and model healthy behaviors for young children. In addition, NHPS advocates for the adoption of 5-2-1-Almost None principles as part of state quality rating and improvement systems for child-care providers.
• Primary Care - In the primary care setting, Nemours convenes pediatric primary care providers from across the state to participate in study groups focused on improving office-based weight management and health promotion skills. Practitioners learn about new interventions and receive tools for use in the office setting, as well as take-home materials for families. 
  
• Out-of-School-Time Organizations - NHPS is collaborating with a number of Delaware organizations to increase healthy eating and physical activity during out-of-school time, both after school and on summer vacation. We support more than 100 after-school and summer programming sites throughout Delaware, helping to create environments that promote and reinforce the 5-2-1-Almost None behaviors. 
  
• Built Environment - NHPS is committed to promoting children’s health in all the places where they live, learn, and play. That’s why we want to make sure that Delaware’s communities provide children and families access to opportunities to be physically active and to eat healthy foods.
  
• Community Engagement - A concentrated effort to promote child health in all settings is underway in Sussex County, Delaware. More than 100 organizations make up the Sussex Child Health Promotion Coalition, including a broad range of business, government, nonprofit, educational, and faith-based participants. A concentrated effort involving grassroots leadership in child health promotion is also underway in the city of Wilmington.