Start Date: April 2016

ID #: CAS037

Organization: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Project Lead: Dianne Ward, EdD

See more related research

Share


The Environment and Policy Assessment and Observation (EPAO) is a tool designed to evaluate practices, environmental attributes, and policies of early care and education (ECE) settings that influence children’s nutrition and physical activity. The purpose of this project is to provide easy-to-use and readily available resources to facilitate the EPAO tool’s use by researchers and public health practitioners. There will be three phases to the project. First, the team will revise older versions of the EPAO and EPAO-Self Report (EPAO-SR) instruments based on updates to the Nutrition and Physical Activity Self Assessment for Child Care (NAPSACC) best practices made in 2013. Next, the corresponding resources needed for efficient data entry and management will be created along with a data dictionary with clear labels/definitions for all variables. The final phase will be to develop a comprehensive training webinar and video-based certification process for EPAO data collectors. The resources developed through this project will be free and publically available on the Children’s Healthy Weight Research Group’s website.

Related Research

June 2017

Updated Environment and Policy Assessment and Observation (EPAO) Tool

The Environment and Policy Assessment and Observation (EPAO) is a tool designed to evaluate practices, environmental attributes, and policies of early care and education settings that influence children’s nutrition, physical activity, and sedentary environments. The tool has been updated to assess all current best practices in Go NAP SACC. The EPAO has been expanded to More

April 2026

Policy Priorities and Research Needs for Advancing Healthy Eating: A 2026-2027 Research Agenda for U.S. Children and Adolescents

Given recent changes to nutrition policies and programs and the food environment landscape, the need for new evidence on how these changes impact nutrition, health, and food access is greater than ever. HER has also published a research agenda intended to provide a blueprint for immediate (i.e., 12-18 month) research needs to inform strategies to More

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