HOPE Prevention
HOPE’s prevention research efforts are focused on developing interventions for parents and educators of young children to promote healthy habits and prevent obesity and related health problems. HOPE programs are based on scientific evidence on health, child development, and the influence of family, peers, school, neighborhood, and culture.
HOPE for Families
Pre-K children learning about foods that make there bodies healthy and strong.
The foundation for HOPE's prevention efforts for families is ParentCorps, an empirically-supported parenting program developed by HOPE’s Director Laurie Miller Brotman, Ph.D. and Esther Calzada, Ph.D. ParentCorps is a school-based program for families of Pre-K students in public schools in underserved, urban communities. The goal of ParentCorps is to help children succeed by supporting families and schools and to promote critical child behavioral, social and emotional skills. ParentCorps has been shown to be highly attractive and engaging for parents, educators and children, and to result in important benefits for children’s behavior in school settings.
With support from HOPE, Drs Laurie Miller Brotman and Spring Dawson-McClure were able to demonstrate that a family intervention focused on the promotion of general parenting practices and child social, emotional and behavioral competence in early childhood leads to clinically important benefits in terms of physical health for girls by early adolescence. HOPE faculty are now studying the effects of ParentCorps on health behaviors in more than 1000 children attending public school Pre-K programs. If the exciting findings from the first HOPE prevention study are replicated, the implications for obesity prevention would be tremendous. Such findings would indicate that a nurturing, supportive and consistent family environment leads to the promotion of positive physical health outcomes as well as social, emotional and behavioral benefits for children.
Pre-K children enjoying water as they participate in HOPE for Families
At the same time as we are studying the long-term outcomes of ParentCorps, HOPE faculty have further enhanced ParentCorps to take advantage of all the recent scientific advances related to children’s health. ParentCorps has been further developed to include components that directly focus on:
- Promoting healthy eating
- Increasing physical activity
- Decreasing sedentary activity
- Promoting healthy sleep habits
The enhanced ParentCorps program was successfully pilot tested in two public elementary schools. Please see Publications and Presentations. The program will be further tested this academic year (2009/2010) in 8 public elementary schools.
HOPE for Schools
HOPE Faculty Spring Dawson-McClure, Ph.D., presents at a professional development workshop for NY City Pre-K directors, teachers, and professionals.
Pre-K teachers have a unique opportunity to play an important role in the development of healthy eating habits as they serve children snacks and lunch in the classroom, and they typically eat lunch with their students. HOPE scientists developed a parallel, companion professional development program to prepare Pre-K teachers to serve as models for healthy eating behavior throughout the school day. HOPE’s professional development program focuses on 10 best practices to help teachers promote healthful eating and activity in the Pre-K classroom.
Since 2008, and with an additional grant from Bank of America, HOPE has provided professional development workshops to over 500 Pre-K directors, teachers, and professionals serving all five New York City boroughs. The New York City Department of Education's Department of Early Childhood serves over 54,000 children.
