Why Nemours Children’s Health is helping a Delaware neighborhood

R. Lawrence Moss, MD, regularly talks about the importance of the social factors that affect the health of children.

R. Lawrence Moss, MD, president and CEO of Nemours Children's Health, is enthusiastic about the health system's effort to expand a community center in Wilmington, Delaware.

Moss, president and CEO of Nemours Children’s Health, also talks about the need to keep children healthy before they end up in a hospital.

So with that context, it’s easy to see why Nemours is offering to help revitalize a community center in Wilmington, Delaware. Nemours is providing an eight-figure loan to help accelerate construction of a new building for Kingswood Community Center.

“I really want people to know that the thing that distinguishes Nemours is, Nemours is in the business of creating health, not just treating disease,” Moss tells Chief Healthcare Executive®. “And this is in the category of what health creation looks like.”

Nemours operates pediatric hospital campuses in Wilmington and Orlando, Florida. Nemours stepped in to help close a gap in funding and boost programming at the center. Kingswood will be able to offer more services, including early childhood education, fitness and arts programs. The community center will also help expand more pediatric and adult health care.

Moss says the health system stepped in as it recognized the community center would have difficulty obtaining financing.

“We saw an opportunity as a catalyst that could unlock a ton of resources that wouldn't be available to the program without us as a catalyst,” he says. “So we jumped on this opportunity.”

However, Moss says Nemours’ contribution goes beyond lending the money.

“We see ourselves as full partners that care as deeply about their agenda for the neighborhood as they do,” Moss says. “And all things children in this endeavor, we want to be involved in, and we will be involved in, and we will continue to contribute In in many ways that go beyond a financial contribution.”

‘A community with deep needs’

Moss says that most of the elements impacting the health of children go beyond medical care, including factors such as housing, good nutrition, and literacy.

“If we want to create health for the whole population of kids, we need to be invested in those things, and the key word about what we're doing here is partnership,” Moss says. “You know, we're experts in high quality medical care, we own that. We're not experts in all of those other things that determine health. So we need partners.”

Nemours Children’s Health is providing an eight-figure loan to help accelerate construction of a new building for Kingswood Community Center and to expand its programs. Above: A rendering of the revamped community center.

The Kingswood Community Center is based in Wilmington’s Riverside neighborhood, and the community faces considerable challenges, including poverty and low high school graduation rates.

“This is a community with deep needs,” Moss says.

“It's a community that is not providing opportunity to anybody of any age, but our lane is children, and if we're going to change that for the older generation, we have to start with kids,” Moss says. “So this is about really being part of creating a whole new generation out of that community and that neighborhood that doesn't exist today, and can't exist without addressing the many other factors that create health that are outside of medical care.”

Food insecurity is also a big problem for many of the neighborhood’s children.

“Many of these kids just don't have enough to eat, period, and that's a tragedy,” Moss says. Some families and children also may be getting enough calories but don’t have access to healthy foods.

Moss says he’s excited about the prospects of helping with the development of early childhood education and nutrition programs. He says the key is getting young children in the Riverside neighborhood ready for school.

“We're deeply involved in creating kindergarten readiness in that neighborhood,” Moss says. “If we can elevate kindergarten readiness, hard data shows that elevates third grade reading level. Hard data shows that elevates high school graduation rate. Hard data shows that elevates life expectancy, median income and economic productivity. So you know, we're looking way into the future and making this kind of difference now.”

• Read more: Nemours Children’s Health invests $430 million in projects in Florida and Delaware

Moss says he has confidence in Logan Herring Sr., CEO, of the Kingswood Community Center and The WRK Group. For his part, Herring says he’s excited about the prospect of reviving Wilmington’s Riverside neighborhood.

“This partnership with Nemours Children's Health is a testament to what's possible when we come together with a shared vision for a stronger, healthier community," Herring said in a statement. “Riverside is filled with potential, and with investments like this, we are building a future where every child, every family, has the opportunity to thrive."

Moss stresses that Nemours aims to be a partner working in concert with Kingswood and community leaders.

“There’s an old cliche … anything you do for us without us, you're doing to us. Anything you do for us with us, you're doing for us,” Moss says. “You know, I really embrace that concept. We're not the experts in improving that community. We're the enabler that can bring the experts together to the table and work with the experts to make the lives of these children better.”

Part of a strategy

Nemours will be measuring progress of its work in the Riverside neighborhood. Moss hopes that in a few years that more children in the neighborhood will be ready for kindergarten.

“Hospitals and health systems typically measure ourselves by medical care measures,” Moss says. “Those are important, and we're going to keep doing that. But we think it's equally important to look at the health or population of all kids, like kindergarten readiness, high school graduation rate, population-based rate of admission to hospitals, things like that. Those are the things that health systems don't measure today, but Nemours will measure.“

Moss is also careful to say that residents in the Riverside have had their expectations for change dashed in the past.

“This is a group of people who have been hit hard in a lot of ways, and have been offered a lot of empty promises,” Moss says. “So, you know, I'm looking for enthusiasm when we've actually proven that we've done something, and we'll do that.”

Moss also says the effort in the Riverside neighborhood is not a “one-off.”

“This is an exemplar of Nemour’s strategy, and you're going to see more and more of this, because this is what creates populations of healthy kids,” Moss says. “We're always good at taking care of the 1% of the 1%, and the really sick kids, and we're not going to stop doing that. We're just going to also do this.”

• Read more: Nemours and Delaware agree on new payment model to address children’s health