CCE Helps Child Care Centers Improve Children's Health
CCE Offers Program to Help Child Care Providers in Suffolk Improve Young Children’s Health
Our Initiative is in Line with First Lady Michelle Obama’s Lets Move! Child Care Program
The Family Health and Wellness Program at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk is proud to announce its newest effort to work with child care providers to help our youngest children get off to a healthy start.
The Nutrition and Physical Activity Self-Assessment for Child Care (NAP SACC) program is part of the Creating Healthy Places to Live, Work and Play in Suffolk County grant which focuses on creative strategies to prevent and reduce obesity-related health problems and improve overall health. The grant was funded by the New York State Department of Health.
The NAP SACC program works directly with child care center directors and staff to improve children’s level of physical activity and nutritional behaviors. Our NAP SACC initiative is in line with First Lady Michelle Obama’s recently unveiled Let’s Move! Child Care program. Mrs. Obama announced earlier this month that her Let’s Move! Program would provide a voluntary set of standards to engage child care providers in behaviors intended to create healthier environments for young children.
In the past four years, obesity rates among preschoolers, ages 2 to 5, have doubled and one in five children are overweight or obese by the time they reach their 6th birthday. Further, 75% of children ages 3-6 years are in daycare. These children eat up to three meals and snacks per day and experience much of their daily physical activity in daycare setting, making child care centers an ideal place to learn about healthy behaviors that will positively affect them for the rest of their lives.
Cheryl Taormina, Director of Riverhead Country Day School, has participated in the NAP SACC program and found it very successful. “By making several simple changes in our Food and Activity Policies we have seen dramatic changes in the children’s food and activity choices,” Ms. Taormina said.
The NAP SACC program: • Is free and provides child care staff with over 7 hours of training. • Provides child care facilities with an easy tool to evaluate their own nutrition and physical activity environment and make changes to support healthy behaviors in young children. • Promote healthy eating in preschool age children in child care settings by serving appropriate foods and role modeling healthy eating behaviors. • Promotes active play in preschool age children in child care settings by providing plenty of indoor/outdoor active playtime and role modeling active lifestyles. • Reaches out to parents through child care settings to promote healthy behaviors at home. For more information on the Cornell Cooperative Extension NAP SACC program, call Kerri Kreh Reda at 727-7850, ext. 330.
