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.
Start Date: April 2016
ID #: CAS037
Organization: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Project Lead: Dianne Ward, EdD
Keywords: Child Care/Preschool, Nutrition standards, Physical activity
Resource Type: Commissioned Research Project Summary
Focus Area: Early Childhood
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 MoreFebruary 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 MoreJanuary 2025