July 2012

Obesity and Food Insecurity at the Same Table: How Head Start Programs Respond

This paper describes the results of the first national study to describe Head Start program practices in three areas: assessing body mass index (BMI), addressing food insecurity, and determining children’s portion sizes. Researchers found that nearly all programs (99.5%) reported obtaining height and weight data, but not all calculated BMI or discussed height and weight More

May 2010

Reaching Staff, Parents, and Community Partners to Prevent Childhood Obesity in Head Start, 2008

This article describes obesity prevention activities directed at staff, parents and community partners in Head Start, the United States’ largest federally-funded early childhood education program. On the bases of survey data, researchers found that 60% of responding Head Start programs trained staff about feeding children, and 63% trained staff about children’s gross motor activity. Eighty-four More

March 2010

Barriers to Obesity Prevention in Head Start

This article details findings gleaned from a national survey of all directors of Head Start, a program that provides early childhood education to nearly one million lower-income children, approximately one third of whom are obese. With respect to implementing policies and practices to address obesity, program directors identified three key barriers: lack of time, money More

September 2007

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