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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 include a self-report version to ease the burden of having trained researchers conduct full day observations. In addition, the observation tool has been adapted for use in family child care homes. Available resources include training videos, observation forms, and data entry tables. Additional materials and training presentations will be available in the future.
Keywords: Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), Child Care/Preschool, Food service, Nutrition standards, Physical activity
Focus Area: Early Childhood
Age Groups: Pregnant women, infants and toddlers (ages 0 to 2), Preschool-age children (ages 3 to 5)
Resource Type: Tools & Measures
Related Research
April 2016
Enhancing the Use of the Environment and Policy Assessment and Observation (EPAO) Tool in Early Care and Education Settings
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 MoreFebruary 2022
Marketing of sugar-sweetened children’s drinks and parents’ misperceptions about benefits for young children
Despite expert recommendations, U.S. parents often serve sugar-sweetened children’s drinks, including sweetened fruit-flavored drinks and toddler milks, to young children. This qualitative research explored parents’ understanding of common marketing tactics used to promote these drinks and whether they mislead parents to believe the drinks are healthy and/or necessary for children. We conducted nine focus groups MoreJanuary 2022