Growing Fit: Georgia's model for engaging early care environments in preventing childhood obesity

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Childhood Obesity Prevention
• Early Childhood Education

Background:

• Childhood obesity is a significant public health issue in the U.S. and Georgia, with 35% of Georgia's children overweight or obese by age five.
• Early childhood is a critical period for addressing weight status, as childhood obesity often persists into adulthood.
• Early care and education environments reach a large number of children, offering a key opportunity for obesity prevention interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the Growing Fit training and toolkit designed to help early childhood educators implement policy, systems, and environmental changes supporting nutrition and physical activity.
• To report on the dissemination of the Growing Fit training and toolkit between January and December 2015.

Main Methods:

• The Growing Fit initiative involved training 103 early childcare educators from 39 centers across 19 Georgia counties.
• The training focused on creating policy, systems, and environmental changes to support good nutrition and physical activity.
• Fifteen participating childcare systems completed pre- and post-test assessments.

Main Results:

• Slight improvements were observed in the 15 childcare systems that completed assessments.
• The training reached 103 educators from 39 early childcare education centers, representing 22 individual childcare systems.
• Plans were in place to train an additional 125 early childcare education centers in 2016.

Conclusions:

• The first year of the Growing Fit training highlighted the necessity for improved assessment methods.
• More robust evaluation is needed to track the adoption and implementation of policy, systems, and environmental changes in trained centers.