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.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and American Heart Association officially announced an ambitious, $8 million collaboration to create and manage an advocacy initiative focused on changing local, state and national policies to help children and teenagers eat healthier foods and become more active.

Nemours received a five year cooperative agreement to develop an Early Care and Education (ECE) learning collaborative. The initiative will develop ECE collaboratives in six states - including New Jersey. These collaboratives will assist ECE providers to adopt nutrition, breastfeeding support, physical activity, and screen time policies and practices.

Campbell's Soup marked the one year anniversary of its Healthy Communities initiative. NJ Department of Health Commissioner Mary E. O'Dowd congratulated Campbell's "for their efforts to provide access to healthy food to thousands of Camden residents in their neighborhoods and opportunities for physical activity to more than a thousand Camden youth. These activities make a real difference in the fight against obesity, a major health challenge in that city and across our state."