State child care licensing regulations, which specify the standards for practice to which child care providers must adhere to be licensed, can be a policy tool for ensuring that child care providers use healthy nutrition, physical activity, and screen time practices. However, what state agencies do to support child care providers in actually implementing these practices, and how equitably this is done, is unknown. It is crucial to understand how best to actually translate state child care obesity prevention policies so that they ultimately improve child health; otherwise, efforts to improve the policies themselves may ultimately be futile. The aims are to 1) Identify specific strategies used by state child care licensing and public health agencies to implement nutrition, physical activity, and screen time policies specified in licensing regulations; 2) Explore state child care licensing administrators’ perceptions of barriers and supports to successful implementation of healthy eating, physical activity, and screen time policies and their perceptions of implementation in under-resourced communities, using qualitative interviews; and 3) Assess whether each state’s regulatory context and state demographics predict the total number of the state’s implementation efforts.
Start Date: February 2019
ID #: 76298
Principal Investigator: Erica Kenney, ScD, MPH
Organization: Harvard College
Funding Round: Round 11
Race/Ethnicity: African American or Black, American Indian, Asian, Latino(a) or Hispanic, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, White
Keywords: Child Care/Preschool, Nutrition standards, Physical activity
Focus Area: Early Childhood
Resource Type: Grant Summary
State: National
Age Groups: Pregnant women, infants and toddlers (ages 0 to 2), Preschool-age children (ages 3 to 5)
Related Research
March 2023
“It has a lot to do with the cumbersome paperwork”: Barriers and facilitators of center-based early care and education (ECE) program participation in the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP)
The Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) is a federally-regulated feeding program that reimburses early care and education (ECE) programs for providing nutritious meals to low-income children. Participation in CACFP is voluntary and varies widely across states. This study assessed barriers and facilitators of center-based ECE program participation in CACFP and identified potential strategies MoreMarch 2023
The Child and Adult Care Food Program and young children’s health: a systematic review
The objective of this review was to summarize the evidence for the impact of CACFP on children’s diet quality, weight status, food insecurity, and cognitive development. Nineteen articles were reviewed, most of which had been published since 2012. Seventeen used cross-sectional designs. Twelve evaluated foods and beverages served; 4 evaluated dietary intake; 4 evaluated the MoreJanuary 2023