Health Promotion Council (HPC) is a nonprofit corporation whose mission is to promote health, prevent and manage chronic disease, especially among vulnerable populations through community-based outreach, education, and advocacy. HPC's unique programs advocating healthier lifestyles, together with its innovative work with communities of color, have advanced the field of health promotion in Southeastern Pennsylvania and across the state. Established in 1981, HPC became an affiliate of Public Health Management Corporation (PHMC), a leading public health institute in the region, in 1999.
HPC has a diverse, multi-cultural, multi-lingual staff and fulfills its mission through programs in four major areas: Chronic Disease Risk Reduction, Chronic Disease Prevention & Management, Community & Organizational Capacity Building, Professional Education & Consulting With a multi-sector and multidisciplinary approach, as well as grassroots ingenuity and locally driven strategies, Health Promotion Council plays a pivotal role in combating childhood obesity in Philadelphia. As the grantee, contractor or manager for several federal, national and local childhood obesity programs and initiatives, HPC maximizes resources and brings together the right people in the right roles to provide families, schools and communities with the tools and information they need to help children live healthy and productive lives. Examples of HPC's current efforts that leverage resources and integrate direct program services and policy-focused initiatives spanning across multiple funding streams include:
FEDERAL-LEVEL INITIATIVES Pennsylvania Nutrition Education TRACKS Pennsylvania Nutrition Education Tracks (TRACKS) is a statewide program that provides Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) to low-income individuals and families who are eligible to receive SNAP benefits. The program, which aims to foster positive behavioral changes related to nutrition and physical activity, is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS). TRACKS is administered through the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare and managed by the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) College of Health and Human Development. HPC has successfully leveraged this cost share program with policy-focused initiatives enabling HPC to provide direct nutrition and physical education for food stamp and food stamp eligible diverse populations. These initiatives include:
ADULT-BASED TRACK: NUTRITION FOR LIFE HPC's Nutrition for Life program, one of the 31 local partners across Pennsylvania, uses an innovative approach to working with minority groups to advance healthy lifestyles. HPC conducts education sessions in community-based settings in the Philadelphia area and provides easy-to-read nutrition education materials in English, Spanish and other languages. In 2009, HPC's nutrition educators conducted 554 group sessions in seven Philadelphia Department of Public Health Family Health Centers, reaching 2628 people. They also conducted 828 one-on-one counseling sessions with health center patients; 119 one-time nutrition workshops and cooking demonstrations that reached 898 seniors; and 250 nutrition classes at various sites. HPC also distributed more than 11,000 nutrition education newsletters to various partners and organizations.
SCHOOL-BASED TRACK: EAT.RIGHT.NOW. HPC’s Eat.Right.Now. provides nutrition education and outreach to approximately 14,500 students attending 25 public, charter and parochial schools in Philadelphia. This program encourages low-income families and children to be physically active and make healthy food choices. HPC's Nutrition Educators provide interactive lessons in the classroom that align with Pennsylvania Department of Education curriculum standards while stressing the importance of a healthy lifestyle. Eat.Right.Now. educators also provide additional nutrition-related educational resources for approximately 500 teachers and nurses in the schools they reach. The schools HPC works with are culturally diverse and six are bi-lingual (Spanish-English) schools. HPC receives funding from the School District of Philadelphia to deliver Eat.Right.Now in schools located in and around the targeted geographic areas of its policy-focused initiatives.
NATIONAL INITIATIVES Philadelphia Urban Food and Fitness Alliance As the grantee for Philadelphia Urban Food and Fitness Alliance (PUFFA), a local initiative of W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Food and Community program, HPC informs policy and system changes that positively affect the health and well-being of children and families where they live, work and play. PUFFA is one of nine collaboratives across the nation funded by Kellogg to engage to improve access to healthy food and to increase opportunities for physical activity and active living. Over the last two years, HPC, on behalf of PUFFA, has led this initiative from planning to implementation of its comprehensive community action plan. More than 75 local partners with wide-ranging expertise in food systems, land-use planning, economic development and health care provided into for the plan, which is being implemented in south and west Philadelphia neighborhoods. To date PUFFA and its community partners have led land beautification efforts, constructed community gardens and is currently working on establishing a shared joint-use agreement between the South Philadelphia community and a local faith-based site. PUFFA has also established a youth communication camp that will create a documentary for use in various advocacy efforts and supported Photovoice projects, where 50 youth participants recorded and reflected their community’s strengths and concerns, identified issues and expressed ways to become personally involved in the solution.
Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities HPC is one of 41 organizations, selected from a pool of 500 nationally, to manage the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities initiative in Philadelphia. HPC will create and implement policies and standards for nutrition and physical activity in after-school programs. These policies consist of customized, age-specific place-based food and physical activities and strategies that after-school providers can implement. Strategy implementation will link after-school sites to existing assets such as farmers markets, urban community gardens, neighborhood corner stores that are in partnership with the Communities Putting Prevention to Work Initiative. We will then pilot the guidelines with the ultimate goal of system-wide implementation. In collaboration with a host of partners, HPC will reach more than 20,000 children enrolled in the City of Philadelphia's Out of School Time (OST) program. OST is an after school provider network managed by Public Health Management Corporation on behalf of the City of Philadelphia.
LOCAL INITIATIVES Communities Putting Prevention to Work Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH), through funding received from the Centers for Disease Control’s Recovery Act Prevention and Wellness Initiative, Communities Putting Prevention to Work, provides funding to HPC, complimenting HPC’s Healthy Kids, Health Communities work. PDPH takes a policy, systems and environmental approach to increasing access to healthy and affordable food, decreasing consumption of junk food and sugary beverages, and increasing access to safe and nearby places for recreation and active transportation. In conjunction with its recent Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant, HPC will assess current nutritional practices at 210 school-based after school sites; develop practical, age-appropriate nutrition standards for these sites; pilot test them in nine sites; and then make recommendations for incorporation into the City’s RFP process while creating a toolkit and offering training for all providers on how to meet these standards.
St. Christopher’s Foundation for Children Through the Healthy Eating Active Living Convergence Partnership’s Land Use/Built Environment and Food Access Innovation Fund, St. Christopher’s Foundation for Children (SCFC) provides funding to HPC to provide nutrition education to underserved families in North Philadelphia. HPC’s nutrition education services is part of SCFC’s Farms to Families programming and policy initiative that aims to improve health for underserved families in North Philadelphia by providing increase access to healthy and affordable food. Leveraging TRACKS program resources, HPC will provide nutrition education to 250 families in SCFC’s new community-support agriculture (CSA) project. The project’s policies focus on the expansion of SNAP and WIC benefits to include purchases from CSA programs.
ADDITIONAL INFO: 28.4% of Philadelphia youth are obese and an additional 18.5% are overweight*. This means nearly one-half of Philadelphia’s youth are at risk for weight-related health problems such as heart disease, type II diabetes, asthma and certain types of cancer. Only 15.7% of Philadelphia youth eat the recommended intake of 5 or more servings of fresh fruits and vegetables daily and fewer than half of Philadelphia school students attend physical education classes at least once a week**.
* 2008 PHMC Southeastern Pennsylvania Health Survey **Food Geography: How Food Access Affects Diet and Health, The Food Trust and PHMC’s Community Health Data Base, April 2006.
260 South Broad Street, Suite 1800 | Philadelphia, PA 19102 | 215.731.6150 PHONE 215.731.6199 FAX Health Promotion Council of (HPC) is a nonprofit corporation whose mission is to promote health, prevent and manage chronic disease, especially among vulnerable populations through community-based outreach, education, and advocacy. For more information, please visit hpcpa.org.