NJ YMCAs, local health departments and non-profits are participating in the ShapingNJ Community Grant project. Funded by the Office of Nutrition and Fitness and the Fitness Council for Physical Fitness and Sport, the grantees are making great strides to implement a variety of activities in support of ShapingNJ strategies.

ONF, the Nemours Foundation and the ShapingNJ Child Care workgroup convened a kick-off meeting for the Nemours-funded NJ Early Care and Education Learning Collaboratives Project. The initiative will create five learning collaboratives and provide training and technical assistance to 30 early care and education centers in each collaborative.

New Jersey adopted new regulations for licensing child care centers that will help children stay active and eat healthfully. Effective September 1, 2013, these strengthened regulations around nutrition, play time, screen time and breastfeeding will help create a healthier environment in child care centers. Special thanks to all of the ShapingNJ partners who were involved in this process.

The Status of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity in New Jersey presents ShapingNJ's guiding goals along with key data points and trends to measure progress toward those goals. This also releases new data from the New Jersey Behavioral Risk Factor Survey about environmental factors related to obesity, nutrition and physical activity. View the Data Highlights page here.

Healthy community design encourages people to live healthier lives through planning, designing and building communities so residents have easy access to both opportunities for regular physical activity and to healthy foods and beverages.

Evaluation results from the New Jersey Nutrition and Physical Activity Self Assessment for Child Care project found that two-thirds of participating child care centers are offering more training and education around nutrition and physical activity to staff and parents. 

A new ShapingNJ report evaluating the New Jersey Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative documented an 11 percent increase in exclusive breastfeeding rates among the 10 participating hospitals. Three participating hospitals received "Baby-Friendly" designation; on average hospitals achieved three to four steps of the 10 steps required for designation.