Improving Child Care Environments, Policy & Practice as a Childhood Obesity Prevention Strategy

Introduction: The National Early Care and Education Learning Collaborative (ECELC) is a 9-state initiative that aims to prevent childhood obesity in early care and education (ECE) settings through implementing policies and practices related to breastfeeding, child nutrition, physical activity, and reducing screen time. Few evaluation/measurement strategies exist for these types of change efforts in ECE settings. This program presentation describes a participatory evaluation among The Nemours Foundation, the Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that was developed to monitor and evaluate change to ECE environments to prevent child obesity. The program presentation describes how evaluation data was used throughout implementation to modify the approach and improve the intervention.  The presentation will also include how to use participant feedback to drive the technical assistance approach.  Approach: We used a participatory evaluation approach across multiple meetings to develop an evaluation of the implementation of the ECELC. This involved the evaluation team facilitating a series of discussions on what was important and feasible to monitor and evaluate. Results: The evaluation data (interview tools, pre/post self assessments, process reporting) was used by program staff and evaluators at multiple points to tweak the intervention and improve it. Discussion: Monitoring and evaluation efforts in ECE settings that are comprehensive and feasible require the use of multiple, diverse methods. Data must be shared with program staff routinely and used to make intervention changes that improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the intervention.