Reviewing Current State Child Care Regulations Related to Healthy Eating and Developing Model Healthy Eating Regulations

The overall goal of this project is to develop relevant, evidence-based resources to guide the creation or revision of state-level child care regulations aimed at promoting healthy eating. Investigators will systematically review and categorize data on state regulations for child-care centers and family child-care homes, and states will receive a ‘report card’ outlining their grade More

Researching the Food Environment of YMCA After-School Programs on Chicago’s South Side

This study will examine the food environments among YMCA after-school programs that primarily serve African-American children on Chicago’s South side, as well as factors impacting the implementation of such after-school programs and snack offerings within these programs. Specifically, the aims of this work are to use qualitative and quantitative methods to: (a) identify the potential More

Assessing an Obesity Audit Tool and Determining Whether School Policies and Environments Predict Relative Weight Outcomes

The purpose of this study is to assess the reliability and validity of a brief, low-cost school environment audit tool, which is currently administered to all Pennsylvania Keystone Healthy Zone public schools. In addition, this research will also determine whether school policies and environments predict relative weight outcomes. The first phase of this work will More

Documenting the Range and Quality of Existing Preschool Food Policies in Connecticut

This project will investigate preschool food policies through two primary aims. First, the study will develop new measures and examine the validity of existing preschool nutrition measures through rigorous psychometric analysis, pilot and primary testing, and validity studies. The final product will be a multi-method toolkit of measures assessing the nutrition environment, caregiver attitudes, food More

Creating a Self-Report Instrument Measuring the Child Care Nutrition Environment and Providing Evidence of the Instrument’s Reliability and Validity

The aim of this study is to create a self-report instrument which will measure the child care nutrition environment and provide evidence for the reliability of scores and validity of inferences from this instrument. By creating a clear, easily understandable instrument that can be used across a range of child care centers to provide reliable More

Evaluating Whether NYC Group Day Cares Meet New City-Mandated Physical Activity and Nutrition Policies and Assessing Perceived Implementation Issues

In 2007, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene added physical activity and nutrition policies for group daycare centers to the NYC Health Code. This project will evaluate whether NYC group daycares meet the new policies, and assess perceived difficulties, barriers, and predictors of implementation associated with these policies. Survey data will be collected More

Survey of Eating Environments and Policies in Head Start

The aim of this study is to describe eating environments and policies in Head Start at the national level, examining their variation by program characteristics. In partnership with DHHS and USDA, this project will develop a survey to describe eating environments and policies in Head Start (including issues such as foods offered, use of nutrient-based More

Macro-Level Predictors of School Wellness Policies in Connecticut

The present study will study the predictors, quality, and impact of Connecticut’s School Wellness Programs (SWP). The aims are to: 1) create, validate, and apply an assessment tool to measure the content and quality of all 2006-07 Connecticut SWPs; 2) view each district’s Index as an outcome variable, and test four categories of predictors; a) More