Start Date: November 2013

ID #: 71393

Principal Investigator: Temitope Erinosho, PhD

Co-Principal Investigator: Dianne Ward, EdD

Organization: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Funding Round: Round 8

See more related research

Share


This study will evaluate nutrition and physical activity practices and policies of licensed child-care centers that enroll 3- to 5-year-old children in the three Southern states with the highest childhood obesity rates—Mississippi, Georgia, and Kentucky—and assess differences in practices and policies by geographic region (e.g., rural/urban), center characteristics (e.g., Child and Adult Care Food Program/non-Child and Adult Care Food Program participation, Head Start/non-Head Start programs), and strength of state regulations. The investigators will conduct a cross-sectional study of 342 centers (82 in Mississippi, 150 in Georgia, 110 in Kentucky). Data on the general nutrition and physical activity practices and policies of participating centers will be collected through surveys completed by the director and two preschool teachers for each center, and an independent review of center policy documents to assess the presence/absence of written policies about these practices. In addition, investigators will complete a quantitative analysis to determine whether current state regulations provide sufficient guidance on nutrition and physical activity practices in child-care centers. Findings from the project will help stakeholders better understand how child-care center practices and policies influence children’s diets and physical activity behaviors, particularly in limited-resource centers and those that serve significant numbers of children in the racial/ethnic and lower-income populations at greatest risk for obesity.

Related Research

November 2025

Forecasting WIC funding needs: Supporting families, strengthening access

WIC serves more than 50% of all infants born in the U.S. The goal of this study is to build a forecasting model to estimate national WIC funding needs under various policy and economic conditions through fiscal year 2027. The model will also be designed to allow for updates to forecast funding needs for future More

August 2025

Diet Quality and Weight Status are Predicted by Federal Nutrition Assistance Program Participation, Health, and Demographics

This study investigated whether demographic, social, and economic determinants of health, including length of time participating in safety net programs, are associated with diet quality and weight status in early childhood. Using the WIC infant and toddler feeding practices study-2, classification and regression tree identified the sequence of binary splits that best differentiated the sample More

February 2025

Consumption of the Food Groups with the Revised Benefits in the New WIC Food Package: A Scoping Review

On 18 April 2024, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published the first food package changes to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) in over a decade, which reduced some food benefits (juice, milk, canned fish, and infant fruits and vegetables) and offered substitutes (cash-value vouchers (CVVs) or cash-value More