Health Beyond Health Care: Nemours Children’s Community Engagement
June 2026
Last Summer, 19 teenagers from Delaware — most of whom had never been outside the United States — took a trip to Peru. They hiked to Machu Picchu. They painted and renovated a community center. They visited a farm and learned how fruit and vegetables grown there end up on our tables. They met children whose schools and homes lacked comforts they had taken for granted.
Through this trip with the YMCA of Delaware Global Teens Program, their eyes were opened wide to a world of new possibilities. It made them dream bigger, understand the value of service, and see more clearly who they want to become. This kind of experience can change the trajectory of a child’s life, which is why Nemours is proud to support this program each year.
Decades of research show that medical care accounts for only about 15% of a child’s overall health. The other 85% is determined by factors like their diet, the safety of their neighborhood, the quality of their education, and the community around them.
If we are serious about creating health and not just treating disease, we must address the full 100% — Whole Child Health. Nemours Community Engagement teams are central to this commitment.
Feeding Communities
Much of their work connects to one of the biggest unmet needs across America: food.
We support food banks and pantries in all of our communities and partner in Florida with Blessings in a Backpack to help provide weekend meals for students facing food insecurity. During the school year, we help feed more than 500 students at Andrew Robinson Elementary, a Title I school in downtown Jacksonville. On Friday afternoons, each child receives a backpack full of healthy food, ensuring they have nutritious meals over the weekend.
Access to food is only one piece of the puzzle. It is also important children eat healthy diets rich in fruits and vegetables.
In Delaware, we partnered with Healthy Foods for Healthy Kids to build six school-based gardens. In these gardens, more than 2,300 children planted seeds, tended beds, and harvested 900 pounds of produce last year. They learned how food grows — and how food helps them grow. In Central Florida, we sponsor garden education programs for preschoolers through 4Roots, because the habits that shape a lifetime of health begin earlier than most people realize.
Students at Andrew Robinson Elementary with their weekend bags.
Filling Gaps in Our Communities
Nemours provides leadership to create Whole Child Health, but we can’t do it alone. Organizations embedded in each community are critical partners to help us identify needs and fill gaps.
In Wilmington, Delaware, we partnered with I Am My Sister’s Keeper to create a hygiene hub for young women lacking access to basic essentials like body wash, toothpaste, and shampoo. In Pensacola, we work with the Escambia County School District and the American Heart Association to train every 11th grader in the District in hands-only CPR.
These may seem like small interventions, but they are the building blocks that children need to build overall good health.
Summer Break Brings Different Needs
When school lets out for the summer, children’s needs don’t pause — they shift. In Wilmington, that means ensuring kids have safe, structured, and enriching spaces to play and learn. Each summer, Nemours helps hundreds of children attend summer camps ranging from basketball programs to classic outdoor day camps. There, children learn teamwork, explore science and technology, build new social connections, and develop curiosity and confidence.
Nemours supports a series of summer and winter break basketball camps for children ages 6 to 16, run by the Delaware Blue Coats, the NBA G League affiliate of the Philadelphia 76ers.
In Florida, children are required to get a physical exam before the school year begins. When free community options declined, Nemours partnered with Shepherd’s Hope to provide free annual physicals and electrocardiograms (EKGs) for children involved in extracurricular activities. Our Nemours clinicians and associates volunteer their time and expertise to run these clinics and also distribute backpacks of school supplies and bags of healthy food.
Championing Children’s Health
These programs represent a fraction of the hundreds of community partnerships we maintain year-round.
Children’s health is more than a series of clinic and hospital visits. Much of it is built in kitchens and classrooms, in gardens and gymnasiums, in opportunities and relationships. The 85% of health that happens outside our walls — for our patients and all other children in our communities — is not someone else’s problem to solve. It is ours, and it belongs to all of us collectively.
That is what our Community Engagement teams do every day. And that is what makes Nemours not just a health care provider, but a true pediatric health partner anchored in our communities and our nation to improve the health of all children.
About Dr. Moss
R. Lawrence Moss, MD, FACS, FAAP is president and CEO of Nemours Children’s Health. Dr. Moss will write monthly in this space about how children’s hospitals can address health-related social needs and create the healthiest generations of children.