AUGUST 2016
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Early care and education – Providing the best
health for the youngest Alaskans
Across the country, 6 out of 10 children under
the age of 6 are being cared for outside the home each week.[1] They’re
attending child care centers, day care homes, Head Start programs, preschool
and pre-kindergarten programs – programs commonly called early care and
education, or ECE, programs.
These programs can provide a healthy environment
for children to eat, play, grow, and develop healthy habits for life. When kids
are physically active and eating nutritious foods, they are healthy, ready to
learn and more likely to be at a healthy weight.[2] With so many
children attending ECE programs each week, they are a good place to focus on
obesity prevention efforts.
More than one out of three Alaska 3-year-olds is overweight
or obese.[3] This puts them at increased risk for weight-related
diseases, like type 2 diabetes. Children with obesity are more likely to become
adults with obesity, which means many of these young children will be obese
their entire lives. The younger you are when you become obese, and the longer
you are obese, the greater your risks for having health problems, chronic
diseases and dying at a young age.
The Let’s Move! Child Care (LMCC)
program, part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative, encourages
and supports ECE providers to make positive changes in their programs to help
children get off to a healthy start. LMCC helps providers meet best practices
in five goal areas: increase physical activity, limit or eliminate screen time,
nurture healthy eaters, provide healthy beverages, and support breastfeeding. Each
goal has several best practices adapted from “Caring for Our Children: National
Health and Safety Performance Standards,” which provides national standards for
ECE settings.[4] ECE providers who meet all the LMCC best practices can
become a “Recognized Let’s Move! Child Care Provider” and are showcased on the
interactive LMCC
map online. This past year, education and promotion efforts helped double
the number of Recognized Let’s Move! Child Care Providers in Alaska.
The Alaska Obesity
Prevention and Control Program has partnered with thread, Alaska’s statewide Child Care Resource
and Referral Network, to implement an Obesity Prevention Quality Initiative. This
initiative provided 14 ECE sites with individualized training and resources to
implement nutrition and physical activity policy changes to help meet the Let’s
Move! Child Care best practices. In order to reach early education programs
throughout Alaska, the quality initiative program used online training resources,
videoconference, telephone and thread ECE trainers located in Anchorage,
Fairbanks and Juneau. A second Obesity Prevention Quality Initiative will begin
this fall for 16 new ECE sites.
The Alaska Alliance for Healthy Kids – Early Care and Education
Group was formed this year to bring together people interested in addressing
childhood obesity in the ECE settings. The group consists of Head Start and
individual ECE providers, as well as ECE organizations that provide licensing,
training, and technical assistance to child care centers, such as thread, the Child
and Adult Care Food Program, the Alaska Child Care
Program Office, and the Women, Infants
and Children Program (WIC). The Alaska Alliance for Healthy Kids group is working
to develop recommendations for improvements in Alaska’s child care regulations
related to nutrition, physical activity, screen time and breastfeeding to help
meet the “Caring
for Our Children: National Health and Safety Performance Standards.” The group also hosts a listserv to provide
up-to-date, Alaska-specific information on childhood obesity prevention issues
for ECE providers.
You can learn more about improving physical
activity and nutrition in the ECE setting by clicking here. You can click here to join the Alaska Alliance for Healthy Kids - ECE listserv.
If you have a question about childhood obesity prevention, please contact Diane
Peck, ECE Obesity Prevention Specialist, at diane.peck@alaska.gov or 907-269-8447.
References:
-
Early Childhood Program
Participation Survey of the National Household Education Surveys Program
(ECPP-NHES:2005). National Center for Education Statistics Web site. Accessed
June 21, 2016.
-
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The Surgeon General’s Vision for a Healthy and Fit nation. Rockville, MD: U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Surgeon General, January
2010.
- Alaska Department of Health and Social Services,
Section of Women’s, Children’s and Family Health. Alaska CUBS (Childhood
Understanding Behaviors Survey) Results – Health & Development Data Sheet.
2013.
- American Academy of Pediatrics, American Public
Health Association, National Resource Center for Health and Safety in Child
Care and Early Education. 2011. Caring
for our children: National health and safety performance standards; Guidelines
for early care and education programs. 3rd edition. Elk Grove Village, IL:
American Academy of Pediatrics; Washington, DC: American Public Health
Association. Also available at http://nrckids.org.
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