New Jersey Healthy Communities Network
The Center for Prevention and Counseling was one of 50 agencies to be awarded a grant from the 
New Jersey Healthy Communities Network.
Our grant is an exciting, cutting edge two-year grant designed to improve the health and well-being of our county’s residents. Specifically, we are going to test whether clients see improvements in their health and well-being and ultimately in their recovery by increasing their activity and improving their nutrition.
The funding mandates a focus on policy changes. Therefore, we will be creating policies within our clinical services that mandate the inclusion of specific, client-driven goals related to physical activity and nutrition in each client’s treatment plan. Over the course of this two-year grant, we will be fine-tuning these policies so that when the grant term ends we will be able to share these policies in electronic format with mental and substance abuse treatment providers throughout New Jersey, thus increasing the reach of our efforts many-fold.
As part of their treatment sessions, clients will be learning about ways to improve their nutrition and increase their physical activity. We will bring local 'experts' to our agency and to other community venues so that our clients and their family members can actually experience such things as yoga, meditation, strength-training and aerobic activities. We will be providing healthy snacks to all our clients and providing them with practical, simple and doable ways in which they can improve their eating habits at home and in the workplace. We will be offering cooking demonstrations and other food-related activities to our clients, including 'couponing' and how to purchase healthy food on a budget.
Creating environmental change is a way to truly move the needle in our county and our state to assist people in implementing improved habits for a heathier way of life.